Feedback-control-aided image stitching using multi-UAV platform

Image stitching using small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is investigated in this paper. A novel approach is presented to take advantage of the UAVs' position information to facilitate a full view of multiple images' stitching. Our ultimate goal is to generate an overview image as soon as possible and, at the meanwhile to achieve the most efficient usage of UAVs' resources. A feedback scheme is proposed together with image processing technique to achieve this goal. In the end, the experimental results using multi-UAV platform are shown to illustrate the benefits of our approach.

[1]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Image Alignment and Stitching , 2006, Handbook of Mathematical Models in Computer Vision.

[2]  David G. Lowe,et al.  Object recognition from local scale-invariant features , 1999, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[3]  Matthew A. Brown,et al.  Automatic Panoramic Image Stitching using Invariant Features , 2007, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[4]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Extracting View-Dependent Depth Maps from a Collection of Images , 2004, International Journal of Computer Vision.

[5]  Allen R. Hanson,et al.  An efficient method for geo-referenced video mosaicing for environmental monitoring , 2005, Machine Vision and Applications.

[6]  Mark D. Pritt.  Fast orthorectified mosaics of thousands of aerial photographs from small UAVs , 2014, 2014 IEEE Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition Workshop (AIPR).

[7]  Hermann Hellwagner,et al.  Collaborative microdrones: applications and research challenges , 2008, Autonomics 2008.

[8]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Efficiently registering video into panoramic mosaics , 2005, Tenth IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'05) Volume 1.

[9]  Cevahir Çigla,et al.  Multi-view dense depth map estimation , 2009, IMMERSCOM.

[10]  Bao-Long Guo,et al.  Image Registration Using Rotation Normalized Feature Points , 2008, ISDA.

[11]  Christopher G. Harris,et al.  A Combined Corner and Edge Detector , 1988, Alvey Vision Conference.

[12]  Bernhard Rinner,et al.  Incremental, orthorectified and loop-independent mosaicking of aerial images taken by micro UAVs , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Robotic and Sensors Environments (ROSE).

[13]  Guo Bao-long,et al.  Image Registration Using Rotation Normalized Feature Points , 2008, 2008 Eighth International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications.

[14]  Luc Van Gool,et al.  Speeded-Up Robust Features (SURF) , 2008, Comput. Vis. Image Underst..

[15]  Ryan Hruska.  Small UAV-Acquired, High-resolution, Georeferenced Still Imagery , 2005 .

[16]  Jie Li,et al.  Image Mosaicing for UAV Application , 2008, 2008 International Symposium on Knowledge Acquisition and Modeling.

[17]  Lei Tian,et al.  Method for automatic georeferencing aerial remote sensing (RS) images from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform , 2011 .

[18]  Harry Shum,et al.  Construction and refinement of panoramic mosaics with global and local alignment , 1998, Sixth International Conference on Computer Vision (IEEE Cat. No.98CH36271).