THE PIXHAWK OPEN-SOURCE COMPUTER VISION FRAMEWORK FOR MAVS

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and micro air vehicles (MAV) are already intensively used in geodetic applications. State of the art autonomous systems are however geared towards the application area in safe and obstacle-free altitudes greater than 30 meters. Applications at lower altitudes still req...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences. Vol. XXXVIII-1/C22; pp. 13 - 18
Main Authors Meier, L., Tanskanen, P., Fraundorfer, F., Pollefeys, M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Copernicus Publications 06.09.2012
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and micro air vehicles (MAV) are already intensively used in geodetic applications. State of the art autonomous systems are however geared towards the application area in safe and obstacle-free altitudes greater than 30 meters. Applications at lower altitudes still require a human pilot. A new application field will be the reconstruction of structures and buildings, including the facades and roofs, with semi-autonomous MAVs. Ongoing research in the MAV robotics field is focusing on enabling this system class to operate at lower altitudes in proximity to nearby obstacles and humans. PIXHAWK is an open source and open hardware toolkit for this purpose. The quadrotor design is optimized for onboard computer vision and can connect up to four cameras to its onboard computer. The validity of the system design is shown with a fully autonomous capture flight along a building.
ISSN:2194-9034
1682-1750
2194-9034
DOI:10.5194/isprsarchives-XXXVIII-1-C22-13-2011