Simultaneous Tracking of Multiple Ground Targets from a Multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Analgorithm for simultaneous tracking ofmultiple ground targets by an unmannedaerial vehicle is presented. The algorithm is specifically tailored towardmultirotor vehicles, and it consists of a particle filter to predict targetmotion, a reference trajectory generator, and a finite-horizon model predictive controller for trajectory tracking. Two versions of the algorithm are proposed: for a vehicle equipped with a gimbaled camera, and for a vehicle equipped with a fixed camera. Furthermore, a target rejection algorithm is included to prune targets that inhibit accurate tracking of the majority of the target set. The tracking algorithm and multirotor vehicle dynamic model are first described, followed by example simulations for both the gimbaled and fixed-camera cases. Trade studies are presented, analyzing the effects of controller tuningparameters and camera field of view, aswell as performance of the target rejection algorithm. In simulation experiments, real-world target data are used to improve simulation fidelity. Overall, results show that the algorithm is effective in capturing a set of ground targets within the field of view simultaneously when using either gimbaled or fixed-camera configurations, but performance is somewhat degraded in the fixed-camera case when target dynamics occur on timescales similar to tracking vehicle dynamics.