Stabilization of Video from Miniature Air Vehicles
David Johansen, James K. Hall, Randal W. Beard, Clark N. Taylor · AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit · 2007
Miniature Air Vehicles (MAVs) equipped with lightweight, inexpensive cameras have recently been employed in a great variety of missions due to their increased capability and continued affordability. Unfortunately, MAVs often experience unintended motions due to atmospheric turbulence. As a result, MAV video streams are often characterized by high-frequency jitter, making it difficult for a human operator to obtain information from the video. This paper describes a tool, operating on a mobile ground station, that produces real-time stabilized MAV video by estimating the actual and intended video motion between frames to remove jitter. The difficulty of this problem is compounded by the noise introduced during transmission.