Visual Target Tracking Using a Formation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

We present a method to visually track and follow a target using a platoon of three unmanned aerial vehicles for the purpose of surveillance, monitoring or escorting. A coordination control technique that enhances specification and monitoring of high level formation parameters such as position, orientation and size is used as a basis for the coordination. A model of a video camera is employed to obtain relative positions with respect to the target of interest. An open-source simulator of Parrot Ar.Drone quadrotors running on the Robot Operating System environment is used to demonstrate the system functionality. Two test cases are presented to illustrate the validity of the approach.