Obstacle avoidance for flight safety on unmanned aerial vehicles

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an obstacle avoidance system for UAVs using a monocular camera. For detecting obstacles, the system compares the image obtained in real-time from the UAV with a database of obstacles that must be avoided. In our proposal, we include the feature point detector Speeded Up Robust Features (SURF) for fast obstacle detection and a control law, with a defined obstacle as target. The system was tested in real-time on a micro aerial vehicle (MAV), to detect and avoid obstacles on unknown environment, and compared with related works.