Skip to main content

Development and Evaluation of a Chase View for UAV Operations in Cluttered Environments

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Selected papers from the 2nd International Symposium on UAVs, Reno, Nevada, U.S.A. June 8–10, 2009

Abstract

Civilian applications for UAVs will bring these vehicles into low flying areas cluttered with obstacles such as building, trees, power lines, and more importantly civilians. The high accident rate of UAVs means that civilian use will come at a huge risk unless we design systems and protocols that can prevent UAV accidents, better train operators and augment pilot performance. This paper presents two methods for generating a chase view to the pilot for UAV operations in cluttered environments. The chase view gives the operator a virtual view from behind the UAV during flight. This is done by generating a virtual representation of the vehicle and surrounding environment while integrating it with the real-time onboard camera images. Method I presents a real-time mapping approach toward generating the surrounding environment and Method II uses a prior model of the operating environment. Experimental results are presented from tests where subjects flew in a H0 scale environment using a 6 DOF gantry system. Results showed that the chase view improved UAV operator performance over using the traditional onboard camera view.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Endlesy, M.: Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancements. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting, pp. 97–101 (1988)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Oh, P.Y., Valavanis, K., Woods, R.: Uav workshop on civilian applications and commercial opportunities. (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Weibel, R.E., Hansman, R.J.: Safety considerations for operation of unmanned aerial vehicles in the national airspace system. Tech. Rep. ICAT-2005-1, MIT International Center for Air Transportation (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Defense, D.o.: Unmanned aircraft systems roadmap 2005–2030. Tech. rep. (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Murphy, R.: Human-robot interaction in rescue robotics. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern. 34(2), 138–153 (2004)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Hing, J.T., Oh, P.Y.: Development of an unmanned aerial vehicle piloting system with integrated motion cueing for training and pilot evaluation. J. Intell. Robot. Syst. 54, 3–19 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Williams, K.W.: A summary of unmanned aircraft accident/incident data: Human factors implications. Tech. Rep. DOT/FAA/AM-04/24, US Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration, Office of Aerospace Medicine (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Calhoun, G., Draper, M.H., Ruff, H.A., Fontejon, J.V.: Utility of a tactile display for cueing faults. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, pp. 2144–2148 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Ruff, H.A., Draper, M.H., Poole, M., Repperger, D.: Haptic feedback as a supplemental method of altering uav operators to the onset of turbulence. In: Proceedings of the IEA 2000/HFES 2000 Congress, pp. 3.14–3.44 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Little, K.: Raytheon announces revolutionary new ‘cockpit’ for unmanned aircraft—an industry first (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Tadema, J., Koeners, J., Theunissen, E.: Synthetic vision to augment sensor-based vision for remotely piloted vehicles. In: Enhanced and Synthetic Vision, vol. 6226, pp. 62260D?1-10. SPIEInt. Soc. Opt. Eng. (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Sugimoto, M., Kagotani, G., Nii, H., Shiroma, N., Matsuno, F., Inami, M.: Time follower’s vision: a teleoperation interface with past images. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 25(1), 54–63 (2005)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Nielsen, C.W., Goodrich, M.A., Ricks, R.W.: Ecological interfaces for improving mobile robot teleoperation. IEEE Trans. Robot. 23(5), 927–941 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Drury, J.L., Richer, J., Rackliffe, N., Goodrich, M.A.: Comparing situation awareness for two unmanned aerial vehicle human interface approaches. Tech. rep., Defense Technical Information Center OAI-PMH Repository. http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai (United States) (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Quigley, M., Goodrich, M. A., Beard, R.: Semi-autonomous human-uav interfaces for fixed-wing mini-uavs. 28 September–2 October 2004

    Google Scholar 

  16. Webb, T.P., Prazenica, R.J., Kurdila, A.J., Lind, R.: Vision-based state estimation for autonomous micro air vehicles. J. Guid. Control Dyn. 30(3), 816–826 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Prazenica, R.J., Watkins, A.S., Kurdila, A.J., Ke, Q.F., Kandae, T.: Vision-based kalman filtering for aircraft state estimation and structure from motion. In: AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, vol. v 3, pp. 1748–1760. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Reston (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Shi, J., Tomasi, C.: Good features to track. In: Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 593–600. IEEE, Piscataway (1994)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Bouguet, J.Y.: Pyramidal implementation of the lucas kanade feature tracker: description of the algorithm. Tech. rep., Intel Corporation Microprocessor Research Labs (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Watkins, A.S., Kehoe, J.J., Lind, R.: Slam for flight through urban environments using dimensionality reduction. In: AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference, vol. v 8, pp. 5018–5029. American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Reston (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Narli, V., Oh, P.Y.: Hardware-in-the-loop test rig to capture aerial robot and sensor suite performance metrics, p. 2006. In: IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Meyer, A.: X-plane by laminar resarch. www.x-plane.com (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Ernst, D., Valavanis, K., Garcia, R., Craighead, J.: Unmanned vehicle controller design, evaluation and implementation: from matlab to printed circuit board. J. Intell. Robot. Syst. 49, 85–108 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Y. Oh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hing, J.T., Sevcik, K.W., Oh, P.Y. (2009). Development and Evaluation of a Chase View for UAV Operations in Cluttered Environments. In: Valavanis, K.P., Beard, R., Oh, P., Ollero, A., Piegl, L.A., Shim, H. (eds) Selected papers from the 2nd International Symposium on UAVs, Reno, Nevada, U.S.A. June 8–10, 2009. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8764-5_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8764-5_25

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8763-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8764-5

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics