Vision-based Autonomous Control of a Quadrotor UAV using an Onboard RGB-D Camera and its Application to Haptic Teleoperation

In this paper we present the design of a platform for autonomous navigation of a quadrotor UAV based on RGB-D technology. The proposed platform can safely navigate in an unknown environment while self-stabilization is done relying only on its own sensor perception. We developed an estimation system based on the integration of IMU and RGB-D measurements in order to estimate the velocity of the quadrotor in its body frame. Experimental tests conducted as teleoperation experiments show the effectiveness of our approach in an unstructured environment.