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arXiv · 1909.04331

Visual Area Coverage with Attitude-Dependent Camera Footprints by Particle Harvesting

Sina Sharif Mansouri·Pantelis Sopasakis·George Georgoulas·Thomas Gustafsson·George Nikolakopoulos
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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.

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Sina Sharif Mansouri, Pantelis Sopasakis, George Georgoulas, Thomas Gustafsson, George Nikolakopoulos. 2019-09-10. Visual Area Coverage with Attitude-Dependent Camera Footprints by Particle Harvesting. https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.04331

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