ROBUST POSITIONING OF DRONES FOR LAND USE MONITORING IN STRONG TERRAIN RELIEF USING VISION-BASED NAVIGATION

Abstract

For land use monitoring, the main problems are robust positioning in urban canyons and strong
terrain reliefs with the use of GPS system only. Indeed, satellite signal reflection and shielding in urban canyons
and strong terrain relief results in problems with correct positioning. Using GNSS-RTK does not solve the
problem completely because in some complex situations the whole satellite's system works incorrectly. We
transform the weakness (urban canyons and strong terrain relief) to an advantage. It is a vision-based navigation
using a map of the terrain relief. We investigate and demonstrate the effectiveness of this technology in Chinese
region Xiaoshan. The accuracy of the vision-based navigation system corresponds to the expected for these
conditions. It was concluded that the maximum position error based on vision-based navigation is 20m and the
maximum angle Euler error based on vision-based navigation is 0.83 degree. In case of camera movement, the
maximum position error based on vision-based navigation is 30m and the maximum Euler angle error based on
vision-based navigation is 2.2 degrees.