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Camera network-based visual servoing for aerial interceptor quadrotors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2025

Guojie Wang Open the ORCID record for Guojie Wang [Opens in a new window] ,
Qingchen Liu Open the ORCID record for Qingchen Liu [Opens in a new window] ,
Qichao Ma Open the ORCID record for Qichao Ma [Opens in a new window]  and
Jiahu Qin Open the ORCID record for Jiahu Qin [Opens in a new window]
Guojie Wang
Affiliation:
Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Qingchen Liu*
Affiliation:
Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Qichao Ma
Affiliation:
Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
Jiahu Qin
Affiliation:
Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
*
Corresponding author: Qingchen Liu; Email: qingchen_liu@ustc.edu.cn
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Abstract

The problem of how to effectively track and intercept small aircraft that break into the no-fly zones is now attracting increasing interest in robotics society. Vision-based control has been proved an effective solution to the target tracking problem for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Due to the limited field of view (FOV) of onboard vision sensors, existing works assume that the target is always detectable during tracking or limit the flight speed of the UAV in practice. In this paper, inspired by the broad FOV of camera network, we are the first to propose an eye-to-hand (i.e., fixed cameras) visual servoing scheme to track and intercept aerial targets by using UAVs and ground visual sensors. Specifically, utilizing rotation matrices, we first present a visual servoing equation to convert the UAV motion in image planes to the inertial frame. Then, an image-based visual servoing controller is designed directly based on image errors of camera nodes in the sensor network, and system stability is proved by means of Lyapunov analysis. Additionally, to achieve the desired translational velocity command, a low-level attitude controller is developed based on the UAV dynamics. Finally, a series of experiments in both simulated and real flight scenarios show the outstanding efficacy of our method.

Keywords

aerial systemsperception and autonomyvisual servoing

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Robotica , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , March 2025 , pp. 1157 - 1170
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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