The field of robotics and mechatronics is advancing at an ever-increasing rate and we are starting to see robots making the transition from the factories to the workplace and homes as cost is reduced and they become more useful. In recent years quadrotors have become a popular unmanned air vehicle (UAV) platform. These UAVs or micro air vehicles (MAV) are being used for many new and exciting applications such as aerial monitoring of wildlife, disaster sites, riots and protests. They are also being used in the film industry, as they are significantly cheaper means of getting aerial footage. While quadrotors are not extremely expensive a good system can cost in the range of $3000 - $8000 and thus too costly as a research platform for many. There are a number of cheaper open source platforms. The ArduCopter is under constant development, has the largest community and is inexpensive making it an ideal platform to work with. The goal of this thesis was to implement video processing on a ground control station allowing for the ArduCopter to track moving objects. This was achieved by using the OpenCV video-processing library to implement object tracking and the MAVLink communication protocol, available on the ArduCopter platform, for communication.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc115056 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Coelho, Gavin |
| Contributors | Kougianos, Elias, Mohanty, Saraju P., Foster, Phillip R., Nasrazadani, Seifollah |
| Publisher | University of North Texas |
| Source Sets | University of North Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | Text |
| Rights | Public, Coelho, Gavin, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved. |
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