Robust Horizon and Peak Extraction for Vision-based Navigation.

Abstract

Most vision based UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) navigation algorithms extract features such as horizons and mountain peaks from 2D input images, and match the extracted features with features obtained from DEM(Digital Elevation Map) by process of registration. The difficulties of the horizon and peak extraction originate from the variations of input images such as noise, viewing direction, and scale. Moreover to prove the existence of horizon is also difficult. Therefore the success of the feature extraction will depend on its ability to cope with these variations. In this paper, we present a new feature extraction method, which is robust to these variations and verified throughout the following experiments.