A Kinect-based natural interface for quadrotor control

This paper presents a new and challenging approach to the control of mobile platforms. Natural user interfaces (NUIs) and visual computing techniques are used to control the navigation of a quadrotor in GPS-denied indoor environments. A visual odometry algorithm allows the platform to autonomously navigate the environment, whereas the user can control complex manoeuvres by gestures and body postures. This approach makes the human–computer interaction (HCI) more intuitive, usable, and receptive to the user’s needs: in other words, more user-friendly and, why not, fun. The NUI presented in this paper is based on the Microsoft Kinect and users can customize the association among gestures/postures and platform commands, thus choosing the more intuitive and effective interface.

► We present a framework for controlling the navigation of a quadrotor in GPS-denied environments. ► A new Kinect-based natural user interface (NUI) to manually control the navigation of a quadrotor is proposed. ► A set of body poses is translated in commands for the flying platform. ► The visual odometry algorithm uses both ArTag and Sift descriptors for the pose estimation during the autonomous flight.