Combined CDGPS and vision-based control of a small autonomous helicopter

Recent results in merging carrier-phase differential GPS (CDGPS) sensing with vision-based sensing to control a small autonomous helicopter are presented. The helicopter is a heavily modified yet low-cost kit helicopter that includes a full on-board CDGPS system, stereo video cameras, and sufficient computational capabilities to perform fully autonomous missions. The demonstration mission presented here is a search of a field to find an object followed by the tracking of that object (using the vision system) as it moves around the field. The helicopter system is described and the performance in accomplishing the task is presented