Quadrotor Control System Design for Robust Monocular Visual Tracking

In this article, we present a control design framework for autonomous visual tracking of a dynamic target by a quadrotor vehicle. The considered problem poses important challenges related to the scale ambiguity, which affects monocular vision systems, and the lack of knowledge of the target dynamic response. These are addressed by leveraging a modular architecture that combines a state-of-the-art visual object tracker with a robust output feedback controller. In particular, by relying on the <tex-math notation="LaTeX">μ</tex-math> -synthesis technique, we design a controller providing suitable stability and performance guarantees. As opposed to previous solutions found in the literature, the proposed design does not require information about the target object depth or its geometry. The effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated through photorealistic simulations, showing that monocular tracking of aerial targets is consistently achieved.