Selection Of A strongUAVstrong Orbit To Keep Multiple Targets In The.pdfVIP

Selection Of A UAV Orbit To Keep Multiple Targets In The Camera Field Of View N. R. Gans, J. Shen and J. W. Curtis Abstract— Decreasing cost and increased capability of un- by finding a trajectory for the UAV, which gives a desired manned air vehicles (UAV’s), along with sensors and requisite distribution of targets in in the image. Specifically, the UAV control and signal processing hardware, is leading to increased will fly an elliptical orbit around the targets. As the UAV use of UAV’s in many applications. One common problem is keeping a target or region in the view of a camera mounted on flies about the ellipse, the mean of the target distribution an UAV. Keeping multiple targets in view at all times compounds is maintained near the image center, and the variance of the problem. For a fixed wing UAV, this is further complicated feature coordinates is maintained to a suitably small value. by the forward velocity constraints of the system. One approach This ensues that the targets do not leave the FOV. is to use path planning algorithms to search through available The work in [11] introduced task functions based on mean, periodic orbits to find one that keeps the targets in view. This paper, presents an initial investigation into such an approach. variance of feature point coordinates in the image. However, We propose to search through the space of elliptical orbits that this control task involved a six-degree of freedom (6DOF) a UAV could fly for one that best keeps multiple targets in view. system that did not have minimum velocity constraints. The The search is performed by rapidly expanding trees in