A ground-based near infrared camera array system for UAV auto-landing in GPS-denied environment

Tao Yang, Guangpo Li, Jing Li, Yanning Zhang, Xiaoqiang Zhang, Zhuoyue Zhang, Zhi Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

56 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel infrared camera array guidance system with capability to track and provide real time position and speed of a fixed-wing Unmanned air vehicle (UAV) during a landing process. The system mainly include three novel parts: (1) Infrared camera array and near infrared laser lamp based cooperative long range optical imaging module; (2) Large scale outdoor camera array calibration module; and (3) Laser marker detection and 3D tracking module. Extensive automatic landing experiments with fixed-wing flight demonstrate that our infrared camera array system has the unique ability to guide the UAV landing safely and accurately in real time. Moreover, the measurement and control distance of our system is more than 1000 m. The experimental results also demonstrate that our system can be used for UAV automatic accurate landing in Global Position System (GPS)-denied environments.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1393
JournalSensors
Volume16
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2016

Keywords

  • Automatic landing
  • Infrared camera array
  • UAV
  • Vision-based navigation

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