OPTICAL FLOW ON A FLAPPING WING-MICRO AIR VEHICLE TO AVOID COLLSIONS AND STEER

摘要

In this paper, we apply optical flow to a flapping wing micro air vehicle (FWMAV) with light weight and a limited payload to avoid obstacles in its flight environment without prior position information of obstacles. In particular, we introduce the FWMAV equipped with a first-person view (FPV) module used to drive a vehicle from the pilot’s viewpoint. In addition, we propose a simple vision algorithm based on the time-to-contact (TTC) which helps FWMAV move toward the opposite direction from obstacles during flight. The experimental results show that the proposed method can be employed for obstacle avoidance.