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Volume 8 Issue 2
Feb.  2021

IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica

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Yuzhen Liu, Ziyang Meng, Yao Zou and Ming Cao, "Visual Object Tracking and Servoing Control of a Nano-Scale Quadrotor: System, Algorithms, and Experiments," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 344-360, Feb. 2021. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003530
Citation: Yuzhen Liu, Ziyang Meng, Yao Zou and Ming Cao, "Visual Object Tracking and Servoing Control of a Nano-Scale Quadrotor: System, Algorithms, and Experiments," IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 344-360, Feb. 2021. doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003530

Visual Object Tracking and Servoing Control of a Nano-Scale Quadrotor: System, Algorithms, and Experiments

doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003530
Funds:  This work was supported in part by the Institute for Guo Qiang of Tsinghua University (2019GQG1023), in part by Graduate Education and Teaching Reform Project of Tsinghua University (202007J007), in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (U19B2029, 62073028, 61803222), and in part by the Independent Research Program of Tsinghua University (2018Z05JDX002)
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  • There are two main trends in the development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technologies: miniaturization and intellectualization, in which realizing object tracking capabilities for a nano-scale UAV is one of the most challenging problems. In this paper, we present a visual object tracking and servoing control system utilizing a tailor-made 38 g nano-scale quadrotor. A lightweight visual module is integrated to enable object tracking capabilities, and a micro positioning deck is mounted to provide accurate pose estimation. In order to be robust against object appearance variations, a novel object tracking algorithm, denoted by RMCTer, is proposed, which integrates a powerful short-term tracking module and an efficient long-term processing module. In particular, the long-term processing module can provide additional object information and modify the short-term tracking model in a timely manner. Furthermore, a position-based visual servoing control method is proposed for the quadrotor, where an adaptive tracking controller is designed by leveraging backstepping and adaptive techniques. Stable and accurate object tracking is achieved even under disturbances. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the high accuracy and stability of the whole tracking system.

     

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    3 In Algorithm 1, we test the sub profiles.
    4 http://www.optitrack.com/
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    Highlights

    • This paper proposes a complete visual object tracking and servoing control system using a tailor-made 38 g nano-scale quadrotor platform. This tracking system is composed of a versatile and robust visual object tracking module, and an efficient PBVS control module. Due to the limited payload, a lightweight monocular visual module is integrated to equip the quadrotor with the capability of object tracking. Additionally, we present a micro positioning deck to provide more stable and accurate pose estimation for the quadrotor.
    • This paper proposes a novel object tracking algorithm, i.e., RMCTer, where a two-stage short-term tracking module and an efficient long-term processing module are tightly integrated to collaboratively process the input frames. Compared with the tracking algorithms such as STUCK, DSST and KCF, the proposed tracker is more applicable in the presence of the variations of object appearance and can effectively compensate the visual tracking errors thanks to the adequate model modification provided by the long-term processing module.
    • This paper proposes an adaptive PBVS control algorithm by leveraging the backstepping and adaption techniques. The proposed controller is robust against the uncertain model parameters and the existence of external disturbances, and their exact model information is not needed in the design of the controller.

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