Visual Area Coverage with Attitude-Dependent Camera Footprints by Particle Harvesting
Abstract
In aerial visual area coverage missions, the camera footprint changes over time based on the camera position and orientation -- a fact that complicates the whole process of coverage and path planning. This article proposes a solution to the problem of visual coverage by filling the target area with a set of randomly distributed particles and harvesting them by camera footprints. This way, high coverage is obtained at a low computational cost. In this approach, the path planner considers six degrees of freedom (DoF) for the camera movement and commands thrust and attitude references to a lower layer controller, while maximizing the covered area and coverage quality. The proposed method requires a priori information of the boundaries of the target area and can handle areas of very complex and highly non-convex geometry. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated in multiple simulations in terms of computational efficiency and coverage.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1909.04331,
title = {Visual Area Coverage with Attitude-Dependent Camera Footprints by Particle Harvesting},
author = {Sina Sharif Mansouri and Pantelis Sopasakis and George Georgoulas and Thomas Gustafsson and George Nikolakopoulos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.04331},
year = {2019}
}