Vision-based Position Control of a Two-rotor VTOL miniUAV

In this paper we address the stabilization of the attitude and position of a birotor miniUAV to perform autonomous flight. For this purpose, we have implemented a Kalman-based sensor fusion between inertial sensors (gyros-accelerometers) and the optical flow (OF) provided by the vehicle. This fusion algorithm extracts the translational-OF (TOF) component and discriminates the rotational OF (ROF). The aircraft’s position is obtained through an object detection algorithm (centroid tracking). Newton-Euler motion equations were used to deduce the mathematical model of the vehicle. In terms of control we have employed a saturated-based control to stabilize the state of the aircraft around the origin. Experimental autonomous flight was successfully achieved, which validates the sensing strategy as well as the embedded control law.