Visual Communication with UAV: Use Cases and Achievements

This paper illustrates an alternative approach towards mission control of UAV beyond the usage of radio data link. It is based on bidirectional visual communication employing onboard computer vision to recognize the operator’s gestures and providing visible feedback to him. This work presents use cases and summarizes the achievements made so far at the Institute of Flight Systems with respect to functional concepts, system architectures, sensor technology, data processing and experimental validation.