International Journal of

Automation and Smart Technology

Jeamron Angelo Arat1, Alvin Chua2*, Louis Adrian Dela Rosa1, Joel Ilao3, Marc Jervin Jamilla1, Jason Renz Reyes1, Oswald Sapang1, and Edwin Sybingco1


1Electronics and Communications Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
2Mechanical Engineering Department, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines
3Computer Technology Department, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

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ABSTRACT


The increasing popularity of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and the availability of associated supporting technologies such as sensors, development toolkits, and programming libraries have expanded the application areas of UAVs via customization of its functions and features. This technological trend has encouraged hobbyists to hack into off-the-shelf commercially available drones to serve different functions with minimal additional costs. In this paper, we present the practicality of using readily available off-the-shelf components in expanding a drone’s functionality by designing and implementing a real-time object-following autonomous hexacopter equipped with an on-board camera used as a primary sensor; this vision-based approach for autonomous navigation addresses the limitations of GPS-based navigation in an indoor environment. The system uses the CIE L*a*b* color space to perform color-based detection and tracking, and employs ultrasonic sensor information to avoid obstacles. In all the trials, the hexacopter was able to follow the targets 90.24% of the time, with guaranteed latency of at most two minutes.


Keywords: Autonomous Control; UAV; Color-based Detection and Tracking; Obstacle Avoidance


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ARTICLE INFORMATION


Received: 2019-08-08

Accepted: 2019-09-26
Available Online: 2021-07-01


Cite this article:

Jeamron. A.A., Alvin. C., Louis. A.D.R., Joel. I., Marc. J.J., Jason. R.R., Oswald. S. and Edwin. S. (2021) A Novel Implementation of a Color-Based Detection and Tracking Algorithm for an Autonomous Hexacopter. Int. j. autom. smart technol. https://doi.org/10.5875/ausmt.v11i1.2143

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