Development of an electro-optical system for small UAV

This paper describes the development of an Electro-Optical System (EOS) in the laboratory for small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). The EOS is an important equipment of a mission-oriented UAV. The EOS, in this paper, can track images and take 3-D measurement of a target as well as acquire high quality images. Image tracking is carried out by the Kalman filter. The position of the target in an image and the relationship among the coordinate systems of the UAV and the camera and reference are used to solve the 3-D position of the target in real coordinates. This paper also presents the hardware system as well as algorithm for the EOS, and then verifies the performance of the image tracking and real-time 3-D measurement of a target's position. The used optimal method to reduce measurement error, caused by inaccuracy of focal length, is Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP). Especially, to reduce the 3-D measurement error of the target, Linear Parameter Varying (LPV) is applied to the measurement system. The performances for their algorithms are verified in the resulting figures. (C) 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.