CN112378397A

CN112378397A - Unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking method and device and unmanned aerial vehicle

Info

Publication number: CN112378397A
Application number: CN202011205401.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 赵小川; 董忆雪; 李陈; 徐凯; 宋刚; 刘华鹏; 郑君哲; 邵佳星; 史津竹; 王子彻; 陈路豪; 马燕琳; 冯云铎
Original assignee: China North Computer Application Technology Research Institute
Current assignee: China North Computer Application Technology Research Institute
Priority date: 2020-11-02
Filing date: 2020-11-02
Publication date: 2021-02-19
Anticipated expiration: 2040-11-02
Also published as: CN112378397B

Abstract

The utility model provides a method and a device for tracking a target by an unmanned aerial vehicle and the unmanned aerial vehicle, wherein the method comprises the following steps: acquiring an image acquired by a sensor of the unmanned aerial vehicle for acquiring the image; determining first spatial position information of the target object according to an image area corresponding to the identified target object in the image; predicting next spatial position information of the target object according to the first spatial position information; and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information. According to the method of the embodiment, the target tracking effect can be improved.

Description

Unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking method and device and unmanned aerial vehicle

Technical Field

The disclosure relates to the technical field of target tracking of unmanned aerial vehicles, in particular to a method and a device for tracking a target by an unmanned aerial vehicle and the unmanned aerial vehicle.

Background

With the advance of the urbanization process of the human society, the finite contradiction between the explosive growth of urban population and the ground surface area continuously rises, so that the urban combat system is positively expanded to the underground space. With the increasing status of underground space in urban operations, the realization of target reconnaissance and detection in underground space is particularly important. In underground space, the unmanned aerial vehicle is used for searching, identifying, locking and tracking targets, and has wide application. In order to realize that the unmanned aerial vehicle normally executes tasks in the underground space, the target tracking problem of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the underground space needs to be solved.

Currently, the target can be tracked according to preset feature points, such as color, texture, shape, and the like of the target.

However, considering that the spatial position of the target is usually changed, the target tracking effect is poor when the target is identified by simply relying on the feature points.

Disclosure of Invention

An object of the embodiments of the present disclosure is to provide a new technical solution for tracking a target by an unmanned aerial vehicle, so as to improve a target tracking effect.

According to a first aspect of the present disclosure, there is provided a method of tracking a target by a drone, the drone being provided with a sensor for acquiring an image, the method comprising: acquiring an image acquired by the sensor; determining first spatial position information of the target object according to an image area corresponding to the identified target object in the image; predicting next spatial position information of the target object according to the first spatial position information; and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information.

According to a second aspect of the present disclosure, there is also provided an unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking apparatus comprising a processor and a memory, the memory being configured to store instructions for controlling the processor to operate to perform the method according to the first aspect of the present disclosure.

According to a third aspect of the present disclosure, there is also provided a drone, characterized by comprising a sensor for acquiring images and a drone target tracking device according to the second aspect of the present disclosure; wherein, unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking device with sensor communication connection.

The method has the advantages that the method of the embodiment of the disclosure acquires the image acquired by the sensor of the unmanned aerial vehicle for acquiring the image; determining first spatial position information of the target object according to an image area corresponding to the identified target object in the image; predicting next spatial position information of the target object according to the first spatial position information; and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information. According to the method of the embodiment, the target tracking effect can be improved.

Other features of the present invention and advantages thereof will become apparent from the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments thereof, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Drawings

The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.

Fig. 1 is a block schematic diagram of an intelligent drone system according to one embodiment;

fig. 2 is a flow diagram of a method of a drone tracking a target, according to one embodiment;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a flow of an optimized fDSST algorithm according to one embodiment;

fig. 4 is a flow diagram of a method of a drone tracking a target, according to one embodiment;

fig. 5 is a schematic diagram of a drone autonomous positioning software interaction interface, according to one embodiment;

fig. 6 is a flow diagram of a method for a drone to track a target, according to another embodiment;

FIG. 7 is a schematic diagram of a drone navigation obstacle avoidance software interaction interface, according to one embodiment;

fig. 8 is a flow diagram of a method for a drone to track a target, according to another embodiment;

FIG. 9 is a block schematic diagram of a drone target tracking device according to one embodiment;

fig. 10 is a block schematic diagram of a drone according to one embodiment.

Detailed Description

Various exemplary embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. It should be noted that: the relative arrangement of the components and steps, the numerical expressions and numerical values set forth in these embodiments do not limit the scope of the present invention unless specifically stated otherwise.

The following description of at least one exemplary embodiment is merely illustrative in nature and is in no way intended to limit the invention, its application, or uses.

Techniques, methods, and apparatus known to those of ordinary skill in the relevant art may not be discussed in detail but are intended to be part of the specification where appropriate.

In all examples shown and discussed herein, any particular value should be construed as merely illustrative, and not limiting. Thus, other examples of the exemplary embodiments may have different values.

It should be noted that: like reference numbers and letters refer to like items in the following figures, and thus, once an item is defined in one figure, further discussion thereof is not required in subsequent figures.

< System embodiment >

Fig. 1 is a schematic structural composition diagram of an alternative intelligent drone system to which the method of the embodiments of the present disclosure may be applied. As shown in fig. 1, the intelligent drone system may include at least a drone and a ground observe and control terminal. The unmanned aerial vehicle and the ground measurement and control terminal can interact in a wireless communication mode.

As shown in fig. 1, the drone may include at least a platform and power subsystem 10, a flight control subsystem 20, a sensing and information fusion subsystem 30, a target detection and tracking subsystem 40, a data link subsystem 50, and a ground measurement and control subsystem 60.

The platform and power subsystem 10 may have a function of carrying a platform with multiple sensors, and specifically may include components such as a machine body, a brushless motor, an electronic speed regulator, a propeller, a battery, and the like; the flight control subsystem 20 may have functions of controlling the attitude and track stability of the unmanned aerial vehicle, acquiring flight state parameters, and performing navigation calculation, and specifically may include components such as an inertial sensor 201, an autopilot, a receiver, and a state knowledge point; the perception and information fusion subsystem 30 can have the functions of autonomous positioning, navigation and flying in the underground garage environment and the like, and specifically can comprise components such as an airborne computer, a two-dimensional laser radar 301, a visual odometer 302, a depth camera 303, a height-determining radar 304 and the like; the target detection and tracking subsystem 40 can have the functions of target detection and identification and dynamic tracking after target locking, and specifically can comprise components such as a photoelectric pod 401; the data chain subsystem 50 may have a function of transmitting images and data between the airplane and the ground in real time by using a data chain integrating high-shielding-resistance graphics and data, and specifically may include an airborne terminal, a ground terminal, and other components; the ground measurement and control subsystem 60 may have functions of ground control and human-computer interaction, and specifically may include components such as a ground measurement and control terminal and a remote controller.

Based on the above, the device interface connection relationship of the drone may be as follows: the onboard computer is respectively connected with the height-determining radar, the laser radar and the automatic pilot through UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter/Transmitter) lines, and is respectively connected with the visual odometer and the depth camera through USB lines; the photoelectric pod is respectively connected with an onboard computer through an HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) line, connected with an onboard end of a data chain through a CVBS (Composite Video Broadcast Signal) Video information line and connected with an automatic pilot through an RS422 (electrical characteristic of a balanced voltage digital Interface circuit) line; the automatic pilot is also connected with the data chain machine-mounted end through an RS 422; the data chain airborne end is in wireless connection with the data chain ground end.

In this embodiment, the Inertial sensor 201, or called an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), may be used to realize six-axis position and attitude solution; the two-dimensional laser radar 301 can be used for realizing high-precision two-dimensional positioning; the visual odometer 302, or called a visual sensor, can be used for realizing six-axis reference position and attitude calculation; the depth camera 303 may be used to enable acquisition of depth data; the pitch radar 304 may be used to achieve precise pitch; the electro-optical pod 401 may be used to capture video data.

< method examples >

Example 1

Fig. 2 is a flow diagram of a method of drone tracking a target according to one embodiment. In this embodiment, the method for tracking the target by the unmanned aerial vehicle may include the following steps S210 to S240.

And step S210, acquiring an image acquired by a sensor of the unmanned aerial vehicle for acquiring the image. For example, the image may be an image captured by the optoelectronic pod 401 described above.

Step S220, determining first spatial position information of the target object according to the image area corresponding to the identified target object in the image.

In detail, the target object to be tracked can be identified according to the image acquired by the sensor, and the target object is locked after the target object is identified. And tracking the target object based on the image corresponding to the identified target object and in combination with the image acquired by the sensor after the target object is identified.

In this embodiment, after the image area corresponding to the target object is determined, the spatial position of the target object may be determined according to the image area, and then the next spatial position of the target object may be predicted according to the spatial position.

In detail, the method for tracking the target by the unmanned aerial vehicle can be applied to an underground garage environment so as to realize target tracking of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the underground garage. As such, in one embodiment, the first spatial location information of the target object is spatial location information of the target object in an underground garage.

Step S230, predicting the next spatial position information of the target object according to the first spatial position information.

Considering the scaling problem of the tracking target on the visual image and the requirement of fast real-time tracking, stable tracking of the dynamic target can be realized by using the fDSST tracking algorithm.

Based on this, in one embodiment, the step S230 includes: predicting a new position according to the position corresponding to the first spatial position information by using a position filter of a fDSST algorithm; predicting a new size according to the new position and the size corresponding to the first spatial position information by using a size filter of a fDSST algorithm; and obtaining the next spatial position information of the target object according to the new position and the new size.

In this embodiment, the next spatial position information may be predicted based on the position and size corresponding to the first spatial position information and through prediction of the new position and the new size.

To further enhance the tracking accuracy to achieve stable tracking of the dynamic target, the fdst algorithm may be optimized, for example, a cyclic matrix method may be used to generate a series of training samples from the target selected in the first frame, which are used to train an optimal correlation filter to estimate the position of the target in the next frame, and a multi-channel correlation filter may be trained by using a multi-channel HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradient) feature. Based on this, the flow of the optimized fdst algorithm may be as shown in fig. 3. The dashed lines in fig. 3 are used to identify the image area corresponding to the target object in the video image.

Referring to fig. 3, the algorithm flow may include:

(1) extracting target characteristics according to target information of a first frame of an image, selecting a Gaussian function with an expected output and a target as a center, and calculating initial parameters of a filter according to input and output;

(2) for each subsequent frame of image, extracting image features from the predicted position of the previous frame;

(3) adding a cosine window and predicting the target position in the frame through a related filter, wherein the operation is completed by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and the operation speed is accelerated;

(4) outputting the obtained maximum response position, namely the target position, and extracting the target position;

(5) and (5) updating the related filter parameters according to the characteristics and repeating the step (2).

Based on this, in one embodiment, the predicting the next spatial position information of the target object in step S230 includes: predicting next spatial position information of the target object by using the optimized fDSST algorithm; wherein the optimized fDSST algorithm has one or more of the following characteristics: the filter derivation adopts point-by-point operation, and is accelerated by Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), so that the operation of a time domain is converted into a complex frequency domain; performing dimension compression on the HOG characteristic by adopting a PCA (Principal Component Analysis) dimension reduction mode, reducing the characteristic dimensions of a position filter and a scale filter, and obtaining scale positioning by triangular polynomial interpolation; and thirdly, interpolating the filtering result, training and detecting the sample by using the coarse characteristic lattice points, and interpolating by using a triangular polynomial to obtain a final prediction result.

In the embodiment, the optimized fDSST tracking algorithm can be used for stably tracking the dynamic target, the target is tracked through the position filter and the scale filter based on the HOG characteristics, the algorithm is fast and efficient by fast calculation of the FFT, the calculated amount is reduced by times by using the PCA dimension compression method, the calculation cost of the FFT is in direct proportion to the characteristic dimension, the target detection range can be enlarged, the tracking accuracy and effect of the algorithm are better, and the requirement on real-time performance is met while the accuracy is ensured. Based on the method, the unmanned aerial vehicle can still track a specific target in real time under the condition of high-speed flight, can be applied to the underground garage environment with the problems of interference of similar targets, shielding of scene obstacles, background speckles of the visual field and the like, and can have a good target vehicle tracking effect.

In one embodiment, the experimental results show that the average frame rate exceeds 35 frames/second, the real-time effect is achieved, and the tracking error is within an acceptable range compared with the flight error caused by the shake of the four-rotor aircraft.

Step S240, controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly toward the target object according to the next spatial position information.

In the embodiment, the high-definition camera is used for shooting the ground target, the acquired image information is processed by the airborne image processing algorithm in real time to obtain the tracking result, and the tracking result can be sent to the unmanned aerial vehicle flight control system in a serial port mode. Specifically, the flight control system can calculate the offset according to the tracking result and control the attitude of the aircraft in the form of the control quantity, so as to complete the tracking of the target object.

In order to ensure that the unmanned aerial vehicle stably tracks the dynamic target object, each acquired frame of video image should include an image corresponding to the target object, otherwise, the tracking failure can be considered to be caused by the target object being lost. In the case of a missing target object, target search and recognition may be initiated again and tracking continued after the target object is recognized again.

Based on this, in one embodiment, after the step S210 and before the step S220, the method further includes: identifying whether the image has the image region; in the case where the image has the image area, performing the step S220; in case the image does not have the image area, the step S210 is performed.

As can be seen from the above, the target tracking method provided in this embodiment performs image recognition on the recognized target object according to the video image acquired by the unmanned aerial vehicle, determines the spatial position of the target object according to the recognition result, and predicts the next spatial position of the target object according to the spatial position, so as to track the target based on the prediction result. The target tracking effect can be improved because the target is not only identified by relying on the characteristic points to realize target tracking.

In one embodiment, the unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking method is applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle shown in fig. 1, and the speed, the continuous tracking time and the tracking loss probability of the unmanned aerial vehicle system tracking the vehicle are verified through a large number of repeated tests by combining simulation and experiments. The test environment, test contents and test results are as follows:

and (3) test environment: and the garage environment of three layers and below three layers underground without satellite signals.

The test contents are as follows: the unmanned aerial vehicle locks the target vehicle, so that the target vehicle moves in the parking lot, the running speed slowly reaches 20km/h, the unmanned aerial vehicle turns, goes upstairs or downstairs to other floors and the like, and the unmanned aerial vehicle always locks the target vehicle for continuous tracking.

And (3) test results: the unmanned aerial vehicle can realize target tracking, and the continuous tracking time is great, and the probability of losing track is less.

In summary, in order to solve the problems of interference of similar targets, blocking of scene obstacles, and background speckle of the field of view in the underground environment, the embodiments of the present disclosure provide that a fdst tracking algorithm is used to achieve stable tracking of a dynamic vehicle. The target is tracked by a position filter and a scale filter based on HOG characteristics, the algorithm is fast and efficient by utilizing fast calculation of FFT (fast Fourier transform), the calculated amount is reduced by times by adopting a PCA (principal component analysis) dimension compression method, the target detection range is enlarged, the tracking precision and effect of the algorithm are better, and the accuracy is ensured and the real-time performance is good.

Example 2

Based on the content disclosed in the above embodiment 1, in the process of realizing the tracking of the target by the unmanned aerial vehicle, the unmanned aerial vehicle can also be autonomously positioned. In one embodiment, referring to fig. 4, the method for tracking a target by a drone may further include the following steps S410 to S440.

In one embodiment, taking an underground garage environment as an example, the unmanned aerial vehicle can perform multi-sensor fusion positioning in the underground garage environment by using the inertial sensor 201, the two-dimensional laser radar 301, the visual odometer 302, the depth camera 303 and the height-fixing radar 304. The schematic diagram of the unmanned aerial vehicle autonomous positioning software interaction interface can be as shown in fig. 5.

As shown in fig. 5, the ROS may be installed in the onboard computer, and a laser elevation driver Package, a laser radar driver Package, a camera driver Package, and a MAVROS Package may be installed in the ROS, and may communicate with a flight control system (i.e., the flight control subsystem 20) of the drone through the MAVROS Package in the ROS.

Specifically, the inertial navigation data acquired by the inertial sensor 201 may be output to a MAVROS Package for information fusion, and the multi-sensor fusion positioning information obtained through the multi-sensor information fusion may be output to a flight control system, so as to control the flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle accordingly.

And S410, obtaining laser positioning information according to the data acquired by the two-dimensional laser radar of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In detail, lidar is typically a millimeter resolution, so that drones can produce higher accuracy even after long periods of operation. In the embodiment, the laser SLAM positioning is carried out by adopting the laser radar, the scene depth can be directly obtained, and the self pose is obtained by splicing the matching map.

In this embodiment, the laser positioning information obtained by the laser radar is further combined with other sensor information to be used for multi-sensor information fusion positioning, so that the two-dimensional laser radar can be selected to obtain the laser positioning information without using the three-dimensional laser radar, and the problems that the three-dimensional laser radar needs to consume higher processor performance when outputting point cloud information, and the three-dimensional laser radar is large in size and expensive and the like due to the use of the three-dimensional laser radar can be avoided.

In one embodiment, the step S410 includes: and performing two-dimensional positioning and environment mapping according to data acquired by a two-dimensional laser radar of the unmanned aerial vehicle by using a Cartographer-based laser SLAM algorithm to obtain pose information of the unmanned aerial vehicle in three plane directions and a yaw direction, wherein the pose information is used as the laser positioning information.

In detail, cartographer is a set of map-based optimization SLAM algorithms derived by google.

In this embodiment, the laser SLAM scheme provides an optimization requirement for all observed quantities at the back end, and can constantly restrict drift generated by sensor data, thereby ensuring the positioning accuracy.

As shown in fig. 5, according to the data collected by the two-dimensional laser radar 301, high-precision two-dimensional positioning and environment mapping are performed through a Cartographer-based laser SLAM algorithm, and pose information of the unmanned aerial vehicle in three plane directions and a yaw direction is output, so as to obtain a laser positioning topic (i.e., the laser positioning information). The obtained laser positioning information can be further used for multi-sensor information fusion positioning to realize autonomous and accurate positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In this embodiment, the laser SLAM is only a part of the information used for autonomous positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle, and the two-dimensional laser SLAM can ensure that the unmanned aerial vehicle can perform high-precision calculation in the direction of the more important degree of freedom of the three plane directions and the yaw direction under the long-time running condition.

And step S420, obtaining visual positioning information according to data respectively collected by an inertial sensor, a visual odometer and a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In consideration of the factors that the pose accuracy of simple camera vision SLAM calculation is low, the inertial navigation data error of the unmanned aerial vehicle is large after the unmanned aerial vehicle runs for a long time and the like, in the embodiment, the image frame is used as reference to correct the accumulated error of the inertial sensor to obtain the postures of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rolling and pitching directions, and the realization mode is more accurate than the mode of simply using the inertial sensor to calculate the pose through filtering.

Specifically, the visual data obtained by the visual odometer, the inertial navigation data obtained by the inertial sensor and the depth data obtained by the depth camera can be subjected to preliminary multi-sensor information fusion to obtain visual positioning information, and the visual positioning information is combined with other sensor information to perform further multi-sensor information fusion positioning so as to realize autonomous positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle. Based on this, can alleviate because of there is the yardstick problem in pure camera vision SLAM for there is great drift after unmanned aerial vehicle long-time operation, and harmful effects such as error increase when weak light and open environment.

In one embodiment, the step S420 includes: and obtaining pose information of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rolling and pitching directions as the visual positioning information by utilizing a VIO-SLAM fusion technology based on the VINS according to inertial navigation data acquired by an inertial sensor of the unmanned aerial vehicle, monocular scene images acquired by a visual odometer of the unmanned aerial vehicle and depth information acquired by a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In detail, the VINS is a monocular vision inertial navigation SLAM scheme for hong Kong science and technology university sourcing, which is a VIO (visual inertial odometer) system based on optimization and sliding window, uses IMU pre-integration to construct a tightly coupled framework, and has the functions of automatic initialization, online external reference calibration, repositioning, closed-loop detection, and global pose graph optimization.

In this embodiment, the visual SLAM scheme provides an optimization requirement for all observed quantities at the back end, and can constantly restrict drift generated by sensor data, thereby ensuring positioning accuracy.

In this embodiment, as shown in fig. 5, the position and posture information of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rolling and pitching directions may be output according to the inertial navigation data acquired by the inertial sensor 201, the monocular scene image acquired by the visual odometer 302, and the depth information acquired by the depth camera 303, and transmitted to the visual SLAM algorithm based on the vision-inertia, so as to obtain the visual positioning topic (i.e., the visual positioning information). The obtained visual positioning information can be further used for multi-sensor information fusion positioning so as to realize autonomous and accurate positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

As can be seen from the above, the visual SLAM in this embodiment is only a part of information used for autonomous positioning of the drone, and the reference of the pose of the drone in directions of other degrees of freedom besides the three planes and the yaw direction can be provided by the visual SLAM.

And step S430, obtaining height information according to data collected by the height-fixing radar of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In this embodiment, as shown in fig. 5, the height topic (i.e., the height information) of the height between the unmanned aerial vehicle and the ground can be transmitted according to the height-determining radar 304. The obtained height information can be further used for multi-sensor information fusion positioning to realize autonomous and accurate positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle. The embodiment uses the height-fixed radar to replace the barometer, and is beneficial to obtaining higher positioning accuracy.

And step S440, obtaining positioning information of the space position of the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the laser positioning information, the visual positioning information and the height information.

As such, the step S250 includes: and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information and the positioning information of the spatial position of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

In this embodiment, the laser SLAM, the visual SLAM, and the height information are only part of information used for autonomous positioning of the unmanned aerial vehicle, and the three output autonomous positioning information of the unmanned aerial vehicle through pose fusion filtering.

In detail, above-mentioned unmanned aerial vehicle is from dynamic positioning mode can be applied to in the underground garage environment to realize the unmanned aerial vehicle from dynamic positioning flight in the underground garage. Thus, in one embodiment, the positioning information of the space position where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located is the positioning information of the unmanned aerial vehicle in an underground garage.

In this embodiment, preferably, the high-precision pose information of the three planes and the yaw direction can be acquired based on the Cartographer laser SLAM scheme, and the rolling and pitching attitude information can be supplemented based on the VINS VIO-SLAM fusion technology.

By last knowing, the unmanned aerial vehicle autonomous localization mode that this embodiment provided carries out multisensor information fusion through the sensor data to two-dimensional laser radar, inertial sensor, vision odometer, depth camera, the height radar these sensors are gathered, can obtain the positional information of unmanned aerial vehicle position. The autonomous positioning mode does not depend on satellite signals such as a GPS (global positioning system), so that the autonomous positioning mode can be applied to underground environments without satellite signals such as an underground garage and can support stable operation of the unmanned aerial vehicle. In addition, the autonomous positioning is realized by no longer mainly relying on inertial navigation data acquired by an inertial sensor, so that the situation that the unmanned aerial vehicle runs for a long time and the inertial navigation data has great drift to pose estimation of the unmanned aerial vehicle can be avoided, and the positioning accuracy of the unmanned aerial vehicle is favorably improved.

In one embodiment, the unmanned aerial vehicle autonomous positioning mode is applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle shown in fig. 1, and the autonomous positioning accuracy of the unmanned aerial vehicle system in autonomous flight in an underground garage and independent of satellite signals is verified through a large number of repeated tests by combining simulation and experiments. The test environment, test contents and test results are as follows:

The test contents are as follows: after the unmanned aerial vehicle takes off, the unmanned aerial vehicle can be kept hovering at a proper height, then a round frame is drawn by taking a point right below the unmanned aerial vehicle as an original point, the actual horizontal position of the unmanned aerial vehicle is captured in real time, and after the unmanned aerial vehicle finishes flying, a positioning error is calculated according to the measured offset of the actual horizontal position relative to the initial point right below the unmanned aerial vehicle.

And (3) test results: unmanned aerial vehicle can realize independently fixing a position, and independently positioning accuracy is high.

To sum up, when the unmanned aerial vehicle is in an underground garage, the GPS module cannot normally operate, and at the moment, the GPS module only depends on the inertial sensor, and can bring large drift to the attitude estimation after long-time operation, so that the positioning accuracy of the unmanned aerial vehicle is influenced. The two SLAM schemes are all at the rear end, the optimization requirements are provided for all observed quantities, the drift generated by sensor data can be restrained constantly, the autonomous positioning mode can still well run without being limited by the environment when the autonomous positioning mode is used in a closed indoor scene such as an underground garage, and the unmanned aerial vehicle is ensured to acquire accurate positioning information in real time.

Example 3

Based on the content disclosed in the above embodiment 1, in the process of realizing the tracking of the target by the unmanned aerial vehicle, the unmanned aerial vehicle can also avoid obstacle to fly. In one embodiment, referring to fig. 6, the step S240 may include the following steps S610 to S640. The unmanned aerial vehicle can respectively and simultaneously execute the steps of obstacle avoidance flight and target tracking.

Step S610, constructing a first map of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located.

The map of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located can be constructed according to the starting position (such as the space position of the unmanned aerial vehicle) and the target position of the obstacle avoidance flight task of the unmanned aerial vehicle and by combining the environment data sensed by each sensor (such as the two-dimensional laser radar 301 and the visual odometer 302) on the unmanned aerial vehicle. Wherein, can confirm unmanned aerial vehicle's spatial position according to unmanned aerial vehicle's autonomic positioning information.

In detail, this unmanned aerial vehicle keeps away barrier flight mode can be applied to in the underground garage environment to realize the unmanned aerial vehicle and keep away the barrier flight in the underground garage. Thus, in one embodiment, the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located is an underground garage where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located.

For example, the sensors such as the visual odometer 302 and the two-dimensional laser radar 301 may be used to obtain the three-dimensional depth information of the underground garage environment and the static obstacles in the environment, and then an environment three-dimensional model is constructed according to the three-dimensional depth information, a global two-dimensional grid map and a three-dimensional octree map are constructed, and a global path is planned and dynamic obstacles are detected based on the three-dimensional depth information.

Therefore, the embodiment provides an environment sensing and obstacle detection mode based on multi-sensor information fusion such as a visual odometer and a laser radar from the perspective of an actual scene, a grid map and an octree map of an underground garage are constructed, and obstacle avoidance capacity of an unmanned aerial vehicle on obstacles such as vehicles is improved.

In addition, this embodiment provides the data basis for unmanned aerial vehicle keeps away barrier flight through constructing the three-dimensional space map, still can avoid appearing that unmanned aerial vehicle keeps away the problem that barrier flight is low, probably fall into local predicament and can't realize accurately avoiding the barrier in real time when flying on the two-dimensional plane.

In one embodiment, the step S610 includes: acquiring a scene structure and local obstacle information of a space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located according to data acquired by a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle;

and establishing a depth information map of the local scene of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located according to the scene structure and the local obstacle information, and presenting the depth information map in the form of an octree map.

Thus, a global path is planned according to the next spatial position information and the first map, that is, the global path can be planned according to the next spatial position information and the octree map. For example, a global search may be performed using an a-star algorithm (a-star algorithm) in the created octree map to plan a global path.

And S620, planning a global path according to the next spatial position information and the first map.

In one embodiment, the planning a global path according to the octree map includes: obtaining target area information of a destination area according to RGB (red, green, blue) image data acquired by a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle; according to the target area information and a preset local map (SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping, instant positioning and map construction), three-dimensional waypoint determination is carried out to obtain positioning information of the spatial position of the destination area; and performing global planning in the octree map by using an A-x algorithm according to the positioning information of the spatial position of the destination area, the local depth information acquired by the depth camera, the positioning information of the spatial position of the unmanned aerial vehicle and the SLAM local map to obtain a global path.

In detail, the RGB color scheme is a color standard in the industry, and various colors are obtained by changing three color channels of red (R), green (G) and blue (B) and superimposing them on each other.

In this embodiment, the visual tracking result may be converted into target point tracking coordinates, and then a global path is planned through an a-x algorithm according to the depth information, the position of the unmanned aerial vehicle, the map created by the laser SLAM, and the position of the target point.

In one implementation, a schematic diagram of the interaction interface of the unmanned aerial vehicle navigation obstacle avoidance software may be as shown in fig. 7. As shown in fig. 7, the ROS (Robot Operating System) may be installed in the onboard computer, and a MAVROS Package may be installed in the ROS, and may communicate with a flight control System (i.e., the flight control subsystem 20) of the drone through the MAVROS Package via a MAVLink (micro air vehicle link) communication manner. For example, after the onboard computer obtains the obstacle avoidance flight result, the onboard computer can output a corresponding instruction of the obstacle avoidance flight result to the flight control system through the MAVROS Package so as to control the flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle accordingly.

In fig. 7, the RGB image topics (i.e., the RGB image data) collected by the depth camera of the drone may be subjected to a visual tracking process (e.g., the visual tracking process may be performed in combination with the Yolov3-tiny network structure and the fdst algorithm), so as to obtain target area topics (i.e., the target area information). And (3) performing three-dimensional waypoint determination (such as three-dimensional waypoint determination through camera model conversion) according to the target area topic and the SLAM local map, and obtaining the three-dimensional waypoint topic (namely positioning information of the spatial position of the destination area). According to positioning information of a spatial position where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located (for example, the positioning information can be a position obtained by an autonomous positioning module of the unmanned aerial vehicle through autonomous positioning), a local depth topic (namely, the local depth information) acquired by a depth camera, a SLAM local map and a three-dimensional waypoint topic, global planning is performed by using an A-x algorithm, and a global path is obtained.

In detail, yolo (young Only Look one) is an object recognition and positioning algorithm based on a deep neural network, which has been developed to v3 version, and can search for a specific target in input data (picture or video). The YOLO V3-tiny detection network can be obtained by compressing and optimizing the YOLO V3 detection network.

In detail, the DSST (cognitive Scale Space tracking) algorithm is a target tracking algorithm based on a correlation filter, and the fdst algorithm is an accelerated modified version of the DSST algorithm.

In the embodiment, the global planning is performed by adopting the A path planning algorithm with the characteristics of high real-time performance, high response speed and the like, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle flies in the planned path to avoid the obstacle, and the robustness of obstacle avoidance of the unmanned aerial vehicle is improved.

Step S630, determining a node next to the node where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located in the global path.

In the step, the next node in the global path is determined according to the position of the unmanned aerial vehicle to serve as the current target node, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can be controlled to fly to the target node from the position of the unmanned aerial vehicle. When flying to a target node, the target node is usually the node where the unmanned aerial vehicle is currently located, so that the next node can be determined again. And circulating the steps until the unmanned aerial vehicle flies to the last node in the global path, thereby completing the obstacle avoidance flying task.

Based on this, in one embodiment, the method further comprises: under the condition that the unmanned aerial vehicle is controlled to fly to the next node, judging whether the next node is the last node in the global path or not; in a case where the next node is not the last node, the step S630 is performed.

And when the next node is judged to be the last node in the global path, confirming that the unmanned aerial vehicle completes the obstacle avoidance flight task, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can enter an autonomous return stage. In the autonomous return stage, the unmanned aerial vehicle can determine a return path according to a map established in the previous stage, and the autonomous recovery function is realized. And determining a new next node when the next node is judged not to be the last node in the global path.

Step S640, controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly to the next node, and determining whether an obstacle exists in the process of controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly to the next node; in the case where there is an obstacle, the global path is updated, and the step S630 is performed.

In this step, a local planning is performed based on the paths between the nodes obtained by the global planning.

An optimal global path can be obtained on the constructed map through a path planning algorithm, and obstacles such as pedestrians and the like which do not exist originally on the map inevitably appear in the moving process of the unmanned aerial vehicle based on the global path. Therefore, the sensor carried on the unmanned aerial vehicle can be used for acquiring the information of the surrounding environment in real time during operation, and accordingly, the local path planning is perfected so as to avoid obstacles on the moving path.

In the embodiment, the global path is updated in real time through real-time local obstacle avoidance, so that the optimality of global path planning is guaranteed not to be changed while the local path is planned.

In the embodiment, in the flight process of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the space environment, the global path planning and the execution of local obstacle avoidance are combined, so that the static obstacles and the dynamic obstacles in the environment can be avoided in real time in a two-dimensional plane and a three-dimensional space, and the obstacle avoidance flight of the unmanned aerial vehicle is realized.

In one embodiment, the global planning and the local obstacle avoidance can be realized based on the octree map with adjustable resolution, namely the global planning and the local obstacle avoidance are respectively based on the maps with different resolutions, so that the navigation efficiency can be improved while the path calculation amount is reduced, and the requirements of detecting and avoiding obstacles in complex scenes such as underground garages can be met.

In one embodiment, the step S640 of updating the global path includes: determining first positioning information of the space position of the obstacle and second positioning information of the space position of the unmanned aerial vehicle; setting a repulsive force field of the obstacle to the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the distance between the first positioning information and the second positioning information; setting a gravitational field of the next node to the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the distance between the positioning information of the next node and the second positioning information; superposing the repulsive force field and the gravitational field to obtain a superposed gravitational field; and updating the global path according to the superimposed gravitational field.

In this embodiment, the repulsive field of the obstacle and the gravitational field of the target node (such as the next node described above) are set, wherein the farther away the repulsive force from the obstacle is, the smaller the gravitational field is, the closer to the target node is. And obtaining an abstract gravitational potential field through superposition, wherein the superposed gravitational field is related to the relative distance between the unmanned aerial vehicle and the obstacle and the relative distance between the unmanned aerial vehicle and the target node. The trajectory of motion can then be adjusted according to the forces to which the drone is subjected in the potential field. Under the common condition, the unmanned aerial vehicle always moves from a high potential energy point to a low potential energy point under the combined action of the gravitational potential generated by the target node and the repulsive potential generated by the barrier, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can always reach the lowest potential energy point in the map.

In this embodiment, utilize artifical potential energy field in order to carry out the developments local obstacle avoidance, realize the real-time update as required of global route, can make unmanned aerial vehicle at the flight in-process, can not only effectively avoid the static barrier in the space environment, still can effectively avoid the dynamic barrier in the space environment (for example to this space environment of underground garage, the dynamic barrier can have pedestrian, the faster vehicle of speed of a motor vehicle etc.), be of value to and reduce unmanned aerial vehicle and keep away the obstacle response time, improve unmanned aerial vehicle and keep away the robustness of obstacle.

As shown in fig. 7, based on the planned global path, an APF (Artificial Potential Field) may be used to implement local obstacle avoidance, and the global path is updated according to the local obstacle avoidance result to obtain a new global path, and based on the new global path, the unmanned aerial vehicle is controlled to fly in an obstacle avoidance manner through the flight control system.

The embodiment provides the unmanned aerial vehicle path planning and obstacle avoidance algorithm which is based on the A-star algorithm and the APF algorithm and has the characteristics of high real-time performance, high response speed and the like for solving the problems of obstacle avoidance and the like in the flight process of the unmanned aerial vehicle, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle has the path planning capability and avoids obstacles in a planned path, and the robustness of the unmanned aerial vehicle is improved.

In one embodiment, after the step S610 and before the step S620, the method further comprises: and removing redundant search nodes in the first map by using a Tie _ Breaker technology. For example, after a first map of a space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located is constructed, redundant search nodes in the first map are removed, and then global search is performed on the first map from which the redundant search nodes are removed by using an a-x algorithm. Therefore, by eliminating unnecessary redundant search nodes, the search efficiency can be improved, the global path can be planned more quickly, and the planned global path is more accurate.

As can be seen from the above, in the unmanned aerial vehicle obstacle avoidance flight mode provided by this embodiment, the space environment map is constructed to plan the global path, and the existence of the obstacle is monitored in real time in the navigation flight process according to the global path, so that the local obstacle avoidance is executed in real time as required to update the global path until the unmanned aerial vehicle completes the obstacle avoidance flight task. The obstacle avoidance flight mode enables the unmanned aerial vehicle to have accurate environment sensing capability and rapid target detection capability, and therefore the unmanned aerial vehicle is applicable to application scenes of obstacle avoidance flight in underground three-dimensional space. Of course, based on the same implementation principle, the obstacle avoidance flight mode can be also suitable for the non-underground three-dimensional space.

In one embodiment, the unmanned aerial vehicle obstacle avoidance flight mode is applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle shown in fig. 1, and the obstacle avoidance speed and the identification distance of the unmanned aerial vehicle system are verified through a large number of repeated tests by combining simulation and experiments. The test environment, test contents and test results are as follows:

The test contents are as follows: in the underground garage environment with obstacles such as columns, vehicles and the like, an unmanned aerial vehicle flight path is set, the path contains the obstacles, in the flight process, the unmanned aerial vehicle timely modifies the flight path to avoid the obstacles, then returns to the planned path to continue flying, and finally lands at the designated position.

And (3) test results: unmanned aerial vehicle can realize keeping away barrier flight, and keeps away barrier speed and discernment distance and all be good.

To sum up, aiming at the problems that an unmanned aerial vehicle has high real-time performance of path planning and rapid obstacle avoidance flight in a complex and narrow space non-structural environment of an underground garage, the embodiment of the disclosure provides an environment sensing and obstacle detection mode based on multi-sensor information fusion such as a visual sensor and a laser radar, an unmanned aerial vehicle path planning and an obstacle avoidance algorithm based on APF, a grid map and an octree map of the underground garage are constructed by using multi-sensor fusion, and the path planning and the local obstacle avoidance are carried out by using the A and APF algorithms, so that the global and local algorithms are respectively based on different resolution maps, the robustness of the unmanned aerial vehicle is improved, the path calculation amount is reduced, and the navigation efficiency is improved.

Example 4

Based on the content disclosed in the above embodiment 1, before the unmanned aerial vehicle tracks the target, the unmanned aerial vehicle can also identify the target. In one embodiment, referring to fig. 8, the method for tracking a target by a drone may further include the following steps S810 to S830.

And step S810, performing image recognition on an image collected by a sensor for collecting the image of the unmanned aerial vehicle until a first image which accords with preset characteristic information is recognized.

For example, the image may be a frame image of a video captured by the optoelectronic pod 401.

In one implementation, the number of the preset feature information may be more than one. For example, when the plurality of preset feature information are respectively a plurality of vehicle feature information, the plurality of corresponding vehicles can be respectively identified.

In detail, the acquired image may be input into a trained model, and then image recognition may be performed by matching features in the image. After the first image is identified according to the preset feature information, the object corresponding to the first image is considered as a suspicious object because the object conforms to the preset feature information. Based on this, in order to improve the target identification accuracy, steerable unmanned aerial vehicle flies to this suspicious object's identification area department to discern its identifying information, and then can further discern the target object according to identifying information.

In detail, the mode of unmanned aerial vehicle recognition target can be applied to the underground garage environment to realize the target recognition of unmanned aerial vehicle in the underground garage. As such, in one embodiment, the preset feature information is vehicle feature information of a target vehicle; the preset identification information is the license plate number of the target vehicle; the identification area is a license plate area. For example, the vehicle characteristic information may include characteristics of a color, an appearance, and the like of the vehicle.

Taking vehicle identification as an example, in order to realize the identification of a target vehicle, firstly, a sensor on an unmanned aerial vehicle is used for collecting images, preset vehicle characteristic information is used as input aiming at each collected frame image, and suspicious target vehicles in random search images are matched by using an image characteristic matching identification network and a license plate identification technology in deep learning. And if the suspicious target vehicles are not searched, further searching the next frame of image until the suspicious target vehicles meeting the preset characteristic information are identified from one frame of image. After the suspicious target vehicle is searched, the vehicle can fly to the suspicious target vehicle so as to locate the license plate position of the suspicious target vehicle in a short distance.

In one implementation, video captured by the electro-optical pod may have images with a resolution of 60fps full high definition and high definition (1280 x 720) or greater. And through the collection of the key frame, the collected image is firstly subjected to preprocessing operations such as image clipping, noise filtering, automatic white balance, automatic exposure, gamma correction, edge enhancement, contrast adjustment and the like, and then the preprocessed image is sent to a vehicle feature recognition network.

In an implementation mode, before a sensor arranged on an unmanned aerial vehicle is used for collecting a video image, self-adaptive light compensation processing can be carried out according to the environmental factors of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can more quickly and accurately identify a target object.

Step S820, controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly to an identification area of a first object corresponding to the first image, and performing image recognition on the image acquired by the sensor under the condition that the unmanned aerial vehicle is controlled to fly to the identification area, so as to obtain first identification information carried in the identification area.

In this step, when the unmanned aerial vehicle flies to the identification region of the suspicious object, the sensor on the unmanned aerial vehicle, such as the image collected by the photoelectric pod, usually contains the image corresponding to the identification region, and the identification information of the suspicious object can be identified therefrom. Of course, if the image corresponding to the identification area is not identified from the current frame image, the next frame image may be continuously identified, and the above steps are repeated until the image corresponding to the identification area is identified from the one image.

Taking vehicle identification as an example, the first object may be a suspicious target vehicle, the identification area may be an area where a license plate of the vehicle is located, and the first identification information may be the license plate of the vehicle.

Based on this, in an embodiment, in step S820, the performing image recognition on the image acquired by the sensor to obtain the first identification information carried by the identification area includes: carrying out image recognition on the image collected by the sensor until a second image corresponding to the license plate area is recognized; correcting the second image to a rectangular image in a frontal view; sending the second image and the rectangular image into an end-to-end OCR (Optical Character Recognition) network for Character matching Recognition to obtain a first license plate number corresponding to the second image and a second license plate number corresponding to the rectangular image; judging whether the first license plate number and the second license plate number are the same; and under the condition that the first license plate number is the same as the second license plate number, determining that the first identification information is the first license plate number or the second license plate number.

In one implementation, the network input shape may be 3 × 160 × 40, the output shape may be 1 × 84 × 20, and the end-to-end character recognition may use CTC-Loss as a Loss function for recognizing license plate characters of variable length.

In the embodiment, an end-to-end method is adopted for identifying the target vehicle, and the neural network is utilized for detecting and positioning the license plate of the vehicle and identifying characters, so that the target can be rapidly detected and identified in real time. Based on the improvement of the target identification efficiency, time can be strived for the follow-up stable tracking of the target object.

In the embodiment, after the license plate area is positioned, on one hand, text information identification is directly carried out to identify the license plate number in the license plate area, and on the other hand, the image of the license plate area is specifically corrected, and then the license plate number is identified. If the identified license plate numbers are consistent, the identified license plate numbers can be considered to have higher identification accuracy.

Step S830, comparing the first identification information with preset identification information, and determining that the first object is a target object when the first identification information is the same as the preset identification information.

In this embodiment, the step S220 may be executed after the step S830.

In this step, if the identified first identification information is consistent with the preset identification information, the suspicious object is considered as the target object, and the target object is locked. By locking the target object, the target tracking processing for the target object can be further performed.

Based on the above, in one embodiment, the method further comprises: inputting a CCPD data set into a YOLO V3-tiny detection network for model training to obtain a first detection model for identifying the first image;

in step S810, the image recognition on the image acquired by the sensor until the first image conforming to the preset feature information is recognized includes: and inputting the image acquired by the sensor into the first detection model for image recognition until a first image which accords with preset characteristic information is recognized.

Based on the above, in one embodiment, the method further comprises: inputting a CCPD data set into a YOLO V3-tiny detection network for model training to obtain a second detection model for identifying the first identification information;

in step S820, the image recognition of the image acquired by the sensor to obtain the first identification information carried in the identification area includes: and inputting the image acquired by the sensor into the second detection model for image recognition to obtain first identification information carried by the identification area.

In detail, the CCPD data set is a large domestic data set for license plate recognition.

In detail, the one-station target detection algorithm of YOLO V3 has the characteristics of strong practicability, sensitivity to small target detection and the like. Considering the situation that the detection real-time performance of the YOLO V3 detection network is not high enough when the YOLO V3 detection network is applied to an onboard embedded system, the embodiment uses a YOLO V3-tiny network after compression pruning on the basis of YOLO V3, and the prediction frame rate is improved by sacrificing a small amount of precision.

For example, remove all ResNet structures on the basis of YOLO V3 and reduce the final output branch to 2. The sizes of the two branch feature maps are 13 × 13 and 26 × 26, respectively, and each feature map uses 3 anchors for prediction. Because each branch has different layer depth feature fusion, the method is still effective for small target detection. The test is carried out by a mode of capturing images by a camera in real time, and the speed can reach more than 25 frames/second.

For another example, the license plate detection and positioning network Model is trained to obtain the YOLO Model, and then the Model Optimizer (Model Optimizer) is used to process the YOLO Model to reduce the weight precision of the trained Model from 32-bit floating point to 8-bit integer, so as to generate an Intermediate Model (IR) after Model optimization. Based on the method, the performance advantage of reasoning on the onboard computer can be better played on the premise of sacrificing a proper amount of precision requirement. The model can then be deployed in the target environment for invocation by the inference engine in the application.

Preferably, model optimization can be performed by using an OpenVINO toolkit released by intel to expand computer visual workload, maximize performance and increase the running speed of inference applications.

In the embodiment, by selecting a one-stop type sub-lightweight model YOLO V3 Tiny, utilizing network compression and pruning technology and simultaneously matching with an onboard computer CPU hardware optimization acceleration technology, real-time high-precision target detection and identification under limited computing resources of an onboard device of an unmanned aerial vehicle can be realized, so that the difficulties that in an underground garage environment, image information obtained by random search is poor in shaking fuzzy illumination and contrast, a license plate blocks stains, the occupation ratio of a license plate area image to be positioned and identified is small and the like are relieved or even overcome, a plurality of target vehicles can be identified simultaneously, the method is suitable for occasions of an embedded low-cost CPU, and the requirements on precision and real-time can be balanced.

By last knowing, the mode of unmanned aerial vehicle discernment target that this embodiment provided carries out preliminary identification according to presetting characteristic information to the discernment object earlier, and further gather identification information when preliminary identification passes through, discerns once more under the circumstances that guarantees that identification information obtains errorlessly, discerns once more through then locking purpose object. The implementation mode can overcome the problems that the target is easy to be identified only by matching the feature information, and the accuracy of target identification is low due to the fact that the feature information has the problems of poor data dependency, expansibility, universality and the like, so that the method can be better applied to target identification and detection in a complex environment.

In one embodiment, the unmanned aerial vehicle obstacle avoidance flight mode is applied to the unmanned aerial vehicle shown in fig. 1, and the search capability and the target vehicle identification accuracy of the unmanned aerial vehicle system are verified through a large number of repeated tests by combining simulation and experiments. The test environment, test contents and test results are as follows:

The test contents are as follows: in the underground garage environment, the target garage with given characteristics is quickly searched and identified, the position of a target vehicle is judged, and the vehicle is locked.

And (3) test results: the unmanned aerial vehicle can realize target identification, and the real-time and the accuracy rate of identification are all good.

In summary, aiming at the problems of complex environment, inconsistent light, blurred image jitter, complex background, small image proportion of a license plate area, large calculation amount of a traditional calculation model and the like in the unmanned aerial vehicle target recognition process, the embodiment of the disclosure constructs a one-stop type sub-lightweight model YOLO V3-Tiny, and utilizes network compression and pruning technologies and simultaneously cooperates with an onboard computer CPU hardware optimization acceleration technology to perform rapid target detection and recognition. By optimizing the image feature matching recognition and license plate recognition network and adopting an end-to-end method to carry out target vehicle rapid recognition, the real-time high-precision target detection recognition under limited computing resources is realized, and the balance of precision and real-time requirements is realized.

Example 5

Based on the contents disclosed in the above embodiments 1 to 4, the above-mentioned unmanned aerial vehicle shown in fig. 1 may have functions of autonomous positioning, obstacle avoidance flight, target identification and target tracking, so as to implement the whole process from takeoff to target search and identification, locking and dynamic tracking to task ending return voyage of the unmanned aerial vehicle in the underground garage, and the specific implementation process of the process may be as follows:

after the unmanned aerial vehicle takes off, various sensor information is fused, and autonomous positioning, navigation and obstacle avoidance flight are carried out;

and secondly, entering a target searching and identifying stage, wherein the stage is mainly responsible for searching a target vehicle in the current underground garage. Performing SLAM positioning and map building through an autonomous positioning module, traversing a current scene by utilizing a strategy of complementing a local map of the SLAM, performing multi-feature fast matching search on vehicles in the environment by utilizing light compensation and a target identification module in the process of traversing the complemented map, determining suspicious vehicles, performing license plate position positioning on the suspicious vehicles, and identifying and matching license plates until a target vehicle is found;

the unmanned aerial vehicle locks a target after completing target search and enters a target tracking stage, wherein the stage mainly performs dynamic tracking and navigation obstacle avoidance on a target vehicle, performs visual tracking on the identified specified vehicle through a target tracking module, performs rapid motion tracking on the visually tracked target vehicle through a navigation obstacle avoidance module, and restarts the target search and identification stage if tracking loss occurs during the period until the task requirement is met;

and fourthly, after the unmanned aerial vehicle finishes the task requirement, entering an autonomous return stage, and determining a return path by the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the map established in the previous stage at the stage to realize the function of autonomous recovery.

Therefore, in the embodiment, by giving the characteristics of the target vehicle, the unmanned aerial vehicle can quickly identify and track the specific vehicle, and autonomous positioning and navigation obstacle avoidance without satellite signals are performed in the process.

In one embodiment, the above-mentioned disclosures of embodiments 1-4 are applied to the above-mentioned drone shown in fig. 1, and the comprehensive performance evaluation of the system is performed through a combination of simulation and experiment through a large number of repeated tests. The test environment, test contents and test results are as follows:

The test contents are as follows: the whole test process is combined together, the unmanned aerial vehicle is tested by realizing the tasks of quick search and dynamic tracking, and the full-automatic navigation obstacle avoidance flight, target search and identification and target locking and dynamic tracking are realized.

And (3) test results: the unmanned aerial vehicle can realize autonomous positioning, obstacle avoidance flight, target identification and target tracking.

< apparatus embodiment >

Fig. 9 is a block schematic diagram of a drone target tracking device 901 according to an embodiment, which drone target tracking device 901 may include at least a processor 9011 and a memory 9012, the memory 9012 being configured to store instructions for controlling the processor 9011 to operate to perform a drone autonomous positioning method according to any embodiment of the present disclosure. The skilled person can design the instructions according to the disclosed aspects of the present disclosure. How instructions control the operation of the processor 9011 is well known in the art and will not be described in detail herein.

In this embodiment, the memory 9012 is used to store computer instructions, and the memory 9012 includes, for example, a ROM (read only memory), a RAM (random access memory), a nonvolatile memory such as a hard disk, and the like.

In this embodiment, the processor 9011 is configured to execute a computer program, which may be written in an instruction set of an architecture such as x86, Arm, RISC, MIPS, and SSE. The processor 9011 may be, for example, a central processing unit CPU, a microprocessor MCU, or the like.

In addition to the processor 9011 and memory 9012 as described above, the drone target tracking device 901 may also include interface devices and the like. The interface means includes, for example, various bus interfaces including a serial bus interface (including a USB interface and the like), a parallel bus interface, and the like.

In one embodiment, the unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking device 901 may be in the onboard computer.

Fig. 10 is a block schematic diagram of a drone, according to one embodiment, the drone 100 may include at least a sensor 1002 for acquiring images and a drone target tracking device 1001 as disclosed by the present disclosure; wherein the drone target tracking device 1001 is communicatively coupled with the sensor 1002.

The present invention may be a system, method and/or computer program product. The computer program product may include a computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program instructions embodied therewith for causing a processor to implement various aspects of the present invention.

The computer readable storage medium may be a tangible device that can hold and store the instructions for use by the instruction execution device. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic memory device, a magnetic memory device, an optical memory device, an electromagnetic memory device, a semiconductor memory device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium would include the following: a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a Random Access Memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or flash memory), a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanical coding device, such as punch cards or in-groove projection structures having instructions stored thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Computer-readable storage media as used herein is not to be construed as transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freely propagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagating through a waveguide or other transmission medium (e.g., optical pulses through a fiber optic cable), or electrical signals transmitted through electrical wires.

The computer-readable program instructions described herein may be downloaded from a computer-readable storage medium to a respective computing/processing device, or to an external computer or external storage device via a network, such as the internet, a local area network, a wide area network, and/or a wireless network. The network may include copper transmission cables, fiber optic transmission, wireless transmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/or edge servers. The network adapter card or network interface in each computing/processing device receives computer-readable program instructions from the network and forwards the computer-readable program instructions for storage in a computer-readable storage medium in the respective computing/processing device.

The computer program instructions for carrying out operations of the present invention may be assembler instructions, Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) instructions, machine-related instructions, microcode, firmware instructions, state setting data, or source or object code written in any combination of one or more programming languages, including an object oriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C + + or the like and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the "C" programming language or similar programming languages. The computer-readable program instructions may execute entirely on the user's computer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computer or entirely on the remote computer or server. In the case of a remote computer, the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through any type of network, including a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer (for example, through the Internet using an Internet service provider). In some embodiments, aspects of the present invention are implemented by personalizing an electronic circuit, such as a programmable logic circuit, a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), or a Programmable Logic Array (PLA), with state information of computer-readable program instructions, which can execute the computer-readable program instructions.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference to flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus (systems) and computer program products according to embodiments of the invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented by computer-readable program instructions.

These computer-readable program instructions may be provided to a processor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, such that the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computer or other programmable data processing apparatus, create means for implementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks. These computer-readable program instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable storage medium that can direct a computer, programmable data processing apparatus, and/or other devices to function in a particular manner, such that the computer-readable medium storing the instructions comprises an article of manufacture including instructions which implement the function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto a computer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other devices to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other devices to produce a computer implemented process such that the instructions which execute on the computer, other programmable apparatus or other devices implement the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block or blocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the figures illustrate the architecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementations of systems, methods and computer program products according to various embodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in the flowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portion of instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions for implementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternative implementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of the order noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in succession may, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks may sometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon the functionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocks in the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implemented by special purpose hardware-based systems which perform the specified functions or acts, or combinations of special purpose hardware and computer instructions. It is well known to those skilled in the art that implementation by hardware, by software, and by a combination of software and hardware are equivalent.

Having described embodiments of the present invention, the foregoing description is intended to be exemplary, not exhaustive, and not limited to the embodiments disclosed. Many modifications and variations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the described embodiments. The terminology used herein is chosen in order to best explain the principles of the embodiments, the practical application, or improvements made to the technology in the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand the embodiments disclosed herein. The scope of the invention is defined by the appended claims.

Claims

1. A method of tracking a target by a drone provided with a sensor for acquiring images, characterized in that it comprises:

acquiring an image acquired by the sensor;

determining first spatial position information of the target object according to an image area corresponding to the identified target object in the image;

predicting next spatial position information of the target object according to the first spatial position information;

and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein predicting the next spatial location information of the target object according to the first spatial location information comprises:

predicting a new position according to the position corresponding to the first spatial position information by using a position filter of a fDSST algorithm;

predicting a new size according to the new position and the size corresponding to the first spatial position information by using a size filter of a fDSST algorithm;

and obtaining the next spatial position information of the target object according to the new position and the new size.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein predicting the next spatial location information of the target object comprises: predicting next spatial position information of the target object by using the optimized fDSST algorithm;

wherein the optimized fDSST algorithm has one or more of the following characteristics:

the filter derivation adopts point-by-point operation, and is accelerated through FFT (fast Fourier transform), and the operation of a time domain is converted into a complex frequency domain;

performing dimension compression on the HOG characteristic by adopting a PCA dimension reduction mode, reducing the characteristic dimensions of a position filter and a scale filter, and obtaining scale positioning by triangular polynomial interpolation;

and thirdly, interpolating the filtering result, training and detecting the sample by using the coarse characteristic lattice points, and interpolating by using a triangular polynomial to obtain a final prediction result.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein after said acquiring the image acquired by the sensor and before said determining the first spatial location information of the target object, the method further comprises:

identifying whether the image has the image region;

performing the step of determining first spatial position information of the target object in a case where the image has the image area;

the step of acquiring an image captured by the sensor is performed in case the image does not have the image area.

5. The method of any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the first spatial location information of the target object is spatial location information of the target object in an underground garage.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining laser positioning information according to data acquired by a two-dimensional laser radar of the unmanned aerial vehicle;

obtaining visual positioning information according to data respectively acquired by an inertial sensor, a visual odometer and a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle;

obtaining height information according to data acquired by a height-fixing radar of the unmanned aerial vehicle;

obtaining positioning information of the space position of the unmanned aerial vehicle according to the laser positioning information, the visual positioning information and the height information;

the controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information includes: and controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the target object according to the next spatial position information and the positioning information of the spatial position of the unmanned aerial vehicle.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said controlling said drone to fly toward said target object according to said next spatial location information comprises:

constructing a first map of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located;

planning a global path according to the next spatial position information and the first map;

determining a next node of the nodes where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located in the global path;

controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the next node, and determining whether an obstacle exists in the process of controlling the unmanned aerial vehicle to fly towards the next node;

and in the case of an obstacle, updating the global path, and executing the step of determining a node next to the node where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located in the global path.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein said constructing a first map of the spatial environment in which the drone is located comprises:

acquiring a scene structure and local obstacle information of a space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located according to data acquired by a depth camera of the unmanned aerial vehicle;

according to the scene structure and the local obstacle information, establishing a depth information map of a local scene of the space environment where the unmanned aerial vehicle is located, and presenting the depth information map in the form of an octree map;

the planning a global path according to the next spatial location information and the first map includes: and planning a global path according to the next spatial position information and the octree map.

9. An unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking device comprising a processor and a memory, the memory for storing instructions for controlling the processor to operate to perform the method of any of claims 1 to 8.

10. A drone, comprising a sensor for acquiring images and the drone target tracking device of claim 9;

wherein, unmanned aerial vehicle target tracking device with sensor communication connection.