A Simple Autonomous Flight Control of Multicopter Using Only Web Camera

Abstract

In this paper, an autonomous flight control method of multicopter using only Web camera is proposed. Autonomous multicopter flight control has attracted much attention. Previously proposed methods have measured the position and posture of multicopter, GPS, motion capture system, and laser range finder are often applied. These methods are effective under certain conditions, but practical use may be difficult in some real environments. To achieve an autonomous flight control of multicopter with simple equipments, we propose an autonomous flight control method using Web camera and simple monitoring display window operation. Colored markers are used to measure the position of multicopter with Cartesian coordinate in three dimensional, then its position connects with elevator, aileron, and throttle operation. For each operation, a simple PI-D control method is used and the controller gains are individually adjusted. To show the effectiveness of our proposed method, experimental results are given.