This paper presents an algorithm and the implementation of a motor schema to aid the visual localization subsystem of the ongoing EMILY project at Texas A and M University. The EMILY project aims to team an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to augment the search and rescue of marine casualties during an emergency response phase. The USV is designed to serve as a flotation device once it reaches the victims. A live video feed from the UAV is provided to the casuality responders giving them a visual estimate of the USVs orientation and position to help with its navigation. One of the challenges involved with casualty response using a USV UAV team is to simultaneously control the USV and track it. In this paper, we present an implemented solution to automate the UAV camera movements to keep the USV in view at all times. The motor schema proposed, uses the USVs coordinates from the visual localization subsystem to control the UAVs camera movements and track the USV with minimal camera movements such that the USV is always in the cameras field of view.
@cite_0: One of fundamental issues for security robots is to detect and track people in the surroundings. The main problems of this task are real-time constraints, a changing background, varying illumination conditions and a non-rigid shape of the person to be tracked. In this paper, we propose a solution for tracking with a pan-tilt camera and a passive infrared range (PIR) sensor to detect the moving object based on consecutive frame difference. The proposed method is excellent in real-time performance because it requires only a little memory and computation. Experiment results show that this method can detect the moving object such as human efficiently and accurately in non-stationary and complex indoor environment.
, in @cite_0 shows the usage of a camera and PIR sensor fusion to track a moving object (human). However, this method has a range limitation posed by the Passive Infrared sensor. For the UAV to track the USV, an algorithm that can track the USV irrespective of the distance of the UAV from the USV, as long as it is in sight of the camera is needed. This is because, the UAV is not stationary as it keeps moving due to the effects of wind and coastal currents in the sea. Also, the PIR sensor consumes additional power and is not reliable in sunlight.