Insect vision based collision avoidance system for Remotely Piloted Aircraft
Holger M. Jaenisch, James Handley, Andrew Bevilacqua · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2012
Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) are designed to operate in many of the same areas as manned aircraft; however, the limited instantaneous field of regard (FOR) that RPA pilots have limits their ability to react quickly to nearby objects. This increases the danger of mid-air collisions and limits the ability of RPA's to operate in environments such as terminals or other high-traffic environments. We present an approach based on insect vision that increases awareness while keeping size, weight, and power consumption at a minimum. Insect eyes are not designed to gather the same level of information that human eyes do. We present a novel Data Model and dynamically updated look-up-table approach to interpret non-imaging direction sensing only detectors observing a higher resolution video image of the aerial field of regard. Our technique is a composite hybrid method combining a small cluster of low resolution cameras multiplexed into a single composite air picture which is re-imaged by an insect eye to provide real-time scene understanding and collision avoidance cues. We provide smart camera application examples from parachute deployment testing and micro unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) full motion video (FMV).