Survey on Computer Vision for UAVs: Current Developments and Trends

TLDR

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles research has surged over the past decade, leading to diverse aerial platforms, but the key challenge remains developing fully autonomous agents that can operate independently, for which visual sensing has been integrated to improve navigation and guidance. This article reviews vision‑based UAV applications, emphasizing current developments, trends, sensor fusion, and future challenges for autonomous agents. The review categorizes vision‑based UAV applications into position‑attitude control, pose estimation and mapping, obstacle detection, and target tracking, and discusses sensor‑fusion techniques and future challenges. Integrating these vision technologies onboard can significantly increase UAV autonomy.

Abstract

During last decade the scientific research on Unmanned Aerial Vehicless (UAVs) increased spectacularly and led to the design of multiple types of aerial platforms. The major challenge today is the development of autonomously operating aerial agents capable of completing missions independently of human interaction. To this extent, visual sensing techniques have been integrated in the control pipeline of the UAVs in order to enhance their navigation and guidance skills. The aim of this article is to present a comprehensive literature review on vision based applications for UAVs focusing mainly on current developments and trends. These applications are sorted in different categories according to the research topics among various research groups. More specifically vision based position-attitude control, pose estimation and mapping, obstacle detection as well as target tracking are the identified components towards autonomous agents. Aerial platforms could reach greater level of autonomy by integrating all these technologies onboard. Additionally, throughout this article the concept of fusion multiple sensors is highlighted, while an overview on the challenges addressed and future trends in autonomous agent development will be also provided.