Autonomous Quadcopter Image Processing for Simulated Search and Rescue Flights
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25077/metal.7.2.8-17.2023Keywords:
autonomous quadcopter, image processing, SAR flight simulationsAbstract
In Search and Rescue (SAR) operations, a designated search area is explored with aircraft and helicopters. After target identification, the flying vehicle continues landing and rescue procedures. This research uses a quadcopter to replicate a SAR flight simulation. Autonomous quadcopter operation includes takeoff and navigation between waypoints determined by Mission Planner software. On the way to the second waypoint, a camera-based image processing system scans the ground surface. If the marker is detected by the image processing system, the Raspberry Pi program will instruct control commands to the Pixhawk flight controller to ensure the quadcopter lands directly on the recognized marker. In the case when the quadcopter reaches the second waypoint but the system fails to identify the marker, the Mission Planner commands the quadcopter to autonomously return to the starting point and land automatically at the take-off location. An interesting aspect of this research concerns the application of a low-cost image processing system to ensure the quadcopter flies at a constant flight altitude above the ground surface, so that the quadcopter can perform simulated SAR flight missions and accurately identify landmarks. Research parameters include marker diameter, flight altitude, and quadcopter speed. The results show successful marker detection at a flying altitude of up to 3 meters above the ground and reaching a top speed of 3 m/s at a flying altitude of 2 meters.References
S. Raj, M. Dreyer, and S. Gururajan, “Autonomous quadcopter navigation using vision-based landmark recognition,†in 2018 Aviation Technology, Integration, and Operations Conference, 2018. doi: 10.2514/6.2018-4243.
A. M. C. Rezende, V. R. F. Miranda, H. N. Machado, A. C. B. Chiella, V. M. Goncalves, and G. M. Freitas, “Autonomous system for a racing quadcopter,†in 2019 19th International Conference on Advanced Robotics, ICAR 2019, 2019. doi: 10.1109/ICAR46387.2019.8981660.
V. N. V. A. Sharma and M. Rajesh, “Building a quadcopter: An approach for an Autonomous Quadcopter,†in 2018 International Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics, ICACCI 2018, 2018. doi: 10.1109/ICACCI.2018.8554718.
L. A. Tran, N. P. Le, T. D. Do, and M. H. Le, “A Vision-based Method for Autonomous Landing on a Target with a Quadcopter,†in Proceedings 2018 4th International Conference on Green Technology and Sustainable Development, GTSD 2018, 2018. doi: 10.1109/GTSD.2018.8595521.
V. M. Respall, S. Sellami, and I. Afanasyev, “Implementation of autonomous visual detection, tracking and landing for AR.Drone 2.0 quadcopter,†in Proceedings - International Conference on Developments in eSystems Engineering, DeSE, 2019. doi: 10.1109/DeSE.2019.00093.
N. Xuan-Mung, S. K. Hong, N. P. Nguyen, L. N. N. T. Ha, and T. L. Le, “Autonomous quadcopter precision landing onto a heaving platform: New method and experiment,†IEEE Access, vol. 8, 2020, doi: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3022881.
D. R. V. J, M. M, and M. J. R. M, “Autonomous Quadcopter for Surveillance and Monitoring,†Int. J. Adv. Res. Comput. Eng. Technol., vol. 7, no. 4, 2018.
S. Gururajan and Y. Bai, “Autonomous ‘figure-8’ flights of a quadcopter: Experimental datasets,†Data, vol. 4, no. 1, 2019, doi: 10.3390/data4010039.
Y. Bai and S. Gururajan, “Evaluation of a baseline controller for autonomous ‘figure-8’ flights of a morphing geometry quadcopter: Flight performance,†Drones, vol. 3, no. 3, 2019, doi: 10.3390/drones3030070.
D. Lakshmanan, P. Saravanan, P. Vadivelu, D. Nivitha, and M. S. Yaswanth, “Performance Analysis of Medium Altitude Low-Cost Autonomous Quadcopter,†in IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 2020. doi: 10.1088/1757-899X/764/1/012037.
K. Pluckter and S. Scherer, “Precision UAV Landing in Unstructured Environments,†in Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, 2020. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-33950-0_16.
H. Singh, Practical Machine Learning and Image Processing. 2019. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4842-4149-3.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Please find the rights and licenses in Jurnal Sistem Mekanik dan Termal (METAL).
1. License
Public use of the works published in this journal is bound to the Creative Commons Attribution license as currently displayed on Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. In previous editions, our articles included incomplete licensing information. In the recent editions, we have corrected this to align with the appropriate license, the CC BY-NC-SA.
2. Author(s)' Warranties
The author(s) warrants that the article is original, written by the stated author(s), has never been published in any form anywhere before, contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, is subject to copyright that is vested exclusively in the author and free of any third-party rights, and that any necessary permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained by the author(s).
3. User Rights
METAL is actively supporting open access and open science initiatives; thus, METAL is disseminating articles published as freely as possible. Under the Creative Commons license, METAL permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work for non-commercial purposes only. Users will also need to attribute authors and METAL when distributing works in the journal.
4. Rights of Authors
Authors retain the following rights:
- Copyright, and other proprietary rights relating to the article, such as patent rights,
- the right to use the substance of the article in future own works, including lectures and books,
- the right to reproduce the article for own purposes,
- the right to self-archive the article.
5. Co-Authorship
If the article was jointly prepared by other authors, by submitting his/her articles to METAL, it warrants that he/she has been authorized by all co-authors and agrees to inform his/her co-authors. Any internal disputes between authors will have to be cleared by themselves, and METAL will be notified of the result. METAL held no responsibilities whatsoever should any disputes arise and was freed from any responsibilities relating to the matter.
6. Miscellaneous
METAL will publish the article (or have it published) in the journal if the article's editorial process is successfully completed and METAL has become obligated to have the article published. METAL may adjust the article to a style of punctuation, spelling, capitalization, referencing, and usage that it deems appropriate. The author acknowledges that the article may be published so that it will be publicly accessible, and such access will be free of charge for the readers.




