Omnidirectional Vision for UAV: Applications to Attitude, Motion and Altitude Estimation for Day and Night Conditions

This paper presents the combined applications of omnidirectional vision featuring on its application to aerial robotics. Omnidirectional vision is first used to compute the attitude, altitude and motion not only in rural environment but also in the urban space. Secondly, a combination of omnidirectional and perspective cameras permits to estimate the altitude. Finally we present a stereo system consisting of an omnidirectional camera with a laser pattern projector enables to calculate the altitude and attitude during the improperly illuminated conditions to dark environments. We demonstrate that omnidirectional camera in conjunction with other sensors is suitable choice for UAV applications not only in different operating environments but also in various illumination conditions.