Open AccessFlying control of small-type helicopter by detecting its in-air natural features
Author(s) -
Chinthaka Premachandra,
Satoshi Takagi,
K. Kato
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of electrical systems and information technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2314-7172
DOI - 10.1016/j.jesit.2015.03.006
Subject(s) - ellipse , airframe , rotor (electric) , helicopter rotor , artificial intelligence , computer science , rotation (mathematics) , computer vision , aerospace engineering , aeronautics , engineering , physics , mechanical engineering , astronomy
Control of a small type helicopter is an interesting research area in unmanned aerial vehicle development. This study aims to detect a more typical helicopter unequipped with markers as a means by which to resolve the various issues of the prior studies. Accordingly, we propose a method of detecting the helicopter location and pose through using an infrastructure camera to recognize its in-air natural features such as ellipse traced by the rotation of the helicopter's propellers. A single-rotor system helicopter was used as the controlled airframe in our experiments. Here, helicopter location is measured by detecting the main rotor ellipse center and pose is measured following relationship between the main rotor ellipse and the tail rotor ellipse. Following these detection results we confirmed the hovering control possibility of the helicopter through experiments