Velocity control for a quad-rotor uav fly-by-camera interface

Abstract

A quad-rotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and a two-degree-of-freedom (DOF) camera unit are combined to achieve a fully-actuated fly-by-camera positioning system. The flight control interface allows the user to command motions in the camera frame of reference - a natural perspective for surveillance and inspection tasks. A nonlinear velocity controller, derived using Lyapunov stability arguments, produces simultaneous complementary motion of the quad-rotor vehicle and the camera positioning unit. The controller achieves globally uniform ultimate boundedness (GUUB) on all velocity error terms.