Optical Guidance for UAV Following of Shorelines

Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) guidance without resorting to preprogrammed GPS signals promises to increase the flexibility in tasking for single or multiple UAVs. This paper reports on a guidance and autopilot system which successfully navigated along a curved shoreline. The project demonstrated that the near infrared (NIR) spectrum is particularly good for navigating on shorelines, since the land and water are easily distinguishable in these wavelengths. Also presented is a new control technique which is able to find control parameters in the image space. This overcomes the need for specialized edge extraction and path generation. Attitude control was maintained by the use of matched long wave infrared thermopiles.