A Novel Marker Based Tracking Method for Position and Attitude Control of MAVs

摘要

In this paper we present a novel method for pose estimation for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), which provides all six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) and runs completely onboard and in real time at 60 Hz. The approach uses a distinct pattern of orange table tennis balls as passive visual markers and a monocular color camera mounted onto the MAV as the only sensor. We show that our method can be used as input of position and attitude controllers for autonomous take-off, hovering and landing of MAVs. As a testing platform we choose an AscTec Hummingbird quadrocopter, which we equipped with a Gumstix processor, running at 600 MHz. The quadrocopter is fully controlled by our method, which acts as input to four independent, classical proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers.