Accession Number:

AD1076268

Title:

Event-Based Visual-Inertial Odometry on a Fixed-Wing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Descriptive Note:

Technical Report

Corporate Author:

Personal Author(s):

• Nelson,Kaleb J.

Report Date:

2019-03-21

Pagination or Media Count:

144.0

Abstract:

Event-based cameras are a new type of visual sensor that operate under a unique paradigm. These cameras provide asynchronous data on the log-level changes in light intensity for individual pixels, independent of other pixels measurements. Through the hardware-level approach to change detection, these cameras can achieve microsecond fidelity, millisecond latency, ultra-wide dynamic range, and all with very low power requirements. The advantages provided byevent-based cameras make them excellent candidates for visual odometry for UAVs. A visual odometry pipeline was implemented with a front-end algorithm for generating motion-compensated event-frames feeding a Multi-State Constraint Kalman Filter MSCKF back-end implemented using Scorpion. This pipeline was tested on a public dataset and data collected from an ANT Center UAV flight test.

Descriptors:

• kalman filters
• drones
• fixed wing aircraft
• inertial navigation systems
• global positioning systems
• global navigation satellite systems
• computer vision
• cameras
• microelectromechanical systems
• robotics
• images

Subject Categories:

• Pilotless Aircraft
• Target Direction, Range and Position Finding

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE