Abstract
Automatic tracking of a moving object such as a person is a demanding technique in surveillance.This paper describes a system for tracking a moving object on the ground employing a visually controlled aerial robot. A blimp is used as the robot in the proposed system because of its locality in motion and silence. The developed blimp is equipped with a camera for taking downward images and four fans for controlling the progression. Once a camera takes an image of a specified moving object on the ground, the blimp is controlled so that it follows the object by the employment of the visual information. Experimental results show satisfactory performance of the system. Advantages of the present system include that images from the air often enable us to avoid occlusion among objects on the ground and that the direction of a blimp' s progression is less restricted in the air than, e.g., a mobile robot on the ground.
