A vision augmented navigation system

We focus on the use of an on-board camera as an additional navigation sensor for an autonomous helicopter. We focus on the critical landing phase, where we exploit the structure of the problem to obtain computationally tractable algorithms. We use the other available navigational elements present on the helicopter to simplify the vision processing and resolve typical image interpretation ambiguities. Thus, the processing of the vision system is done not in isolation, but in the larger context of the overall navigation problem. By using a tight integration of vision with inertial estimates the algorithm can be implemented at modest frame rates (/spl sim/5 Hz) with off-the-shelf hardware.