Tracking people with an autonomous drone

Dupuis, A. T. (2014) Tracking people with an autonomous drone. Bachelor's Thesis, Artificial Intelligence.

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Abstract

An important research subject in robotics is the tracking and following of people. In this study a three-component quadcopter unmanned aerial system has been developed tasked with autonomously tracking and following a person at a fixed distance for at least one minute. A colour histogram based particle filter is employed to process monocular camera input and provide an estimate of the position of the person of interest relative to the drone in 3D space. This information is fed into a set of PID controllers to produce a combination of upward/downward movements, forward/backward movements and/or rotations in the horizontal plane. Optical flow measurement is used for obstacle detection and consequently issuing an emergency stop in case of high collision risk. Performance has been assessed by conducting multiple trials in which the quadcopter is instructed to follow one out of several mobile study participants and measuring for how long the system is able to approximately keep the predetermined distance. The results show that the system can correctly track people when lighting conditions do not show too much variation, although connection issues between the drone and the ground station are a complicating factor and regularly cause system failure.

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor's Thesis)
Degree programme:	Artificial Intelligence
Thesis type:	Bachelor's Thesis
Language:	English
Date Deposited:	15 Feb 2018 07:58
Last Modified:	15 Feb 2018 07:58
URI:	https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/11956

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