Aerial Photography System Design And Implementation For Small Sized Unmanned Helicopter

Helicopters have many advantages compared to the fixed-wing aircraft: It can vertically takeoff and land without terrain limit, change the heading quickly, hover in the air and fly close tothe ground. Then helicopters are widely applied in fields such as military reconnaissance,topographic mapping, agricultural spraying, etc.Aerial photography system is an important mission system of the small sized unmannedhelicopter. It can shoot the environment around the helicopter, display the video at the groundstation and control the aerial platform attitude to control the shooting range.The main research contents and results of this paper are as follows:1) Aerial photography system design. Including: image acquisition module, main controlmodule, communication module, ground monitoring module, aerial platform control module,autonomous landing based on image module, goal tracing module. There are two models forthe aerial photography system design, one is using analog camera to shoot the environmentand transmit the video to the ground station, the other way is using digit camera to shoot, dealwith and transmit the pictures.2) Aerial platform control method was completed. It can precisely and real-time controlthe aerial platform attitude, can shoot and show the picture in the specified range. Aerialplatform control is also the basement of autonomous landing which based on imageprocessing and target tracing.3) Autonomous landing technique which based on image was realized. When helicopter landing, the aerial photography system can calculate the distance and height between thehelicopter and the target landing point. Through detecting a QR code on the ground, the aerialphotography system can calculate the distance and height between the helicopter and thetarget landing point, and to control the helicopter landing.4) The software of the aerial photography system has been implemented. Including:image processing algorithm, control algorithm, data transmission algorithm and groundstation monitor system.An aerial photography system for small sized unmanned helicopter was complemented in thispaper. It can transmit image smoothly, control the aerial platform, shoot the surroundenvironment. Based on image processing, it also can land on the target position precisely.With the aerial photography system, the small sized unmanned helicopter becomes moreflexible and adaptive.