Small UAV Camera Gimbal Stabilization Using Digital Filters and Enhanced Control Algorithms for Aerial Survey and Monitoring

2020 Acta Montanistica Slovaca  
Aerial photography, monitoring and survey using small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is a modern, cheap, simple, helpful developing and improving area. For these purposes research is focused mainly on the cameras and image processing methods and software. However, as it was confirmed in the article, a stabilized camera gimbal is also very necessary to obtain quality and bright pictures or video records and to allow the operator or the tracking computer to track the camera's line of sight to
more » ... point of an interest. Because the camera stabilization is a k influencing the quality of the pictures or videos and considering the application on the UAVs performing the flights in and often also in the mountain terrain, the wind conditions, turbulences, wind shears, which can vary in the directions significantly, the convenient stabilization of the camera gimbal can have a significant influence on the obtained results, which are very important for the creation of the precise 2D or 3D models. Furthermore, to payload, it is important to use lightweight solutions. onboard electronics of small UAVs, regarding and computational performance, a small microcontroller convenient, simple, and still fast enough control algorithm needs to be designed and implemented. In order to stabilize it is needed to design a model of the actuators as well as the gearings, to propose an effective control algorithm and to implement the control algorithms into microcontrollers. This article deals with the modelling of the actuator, conventional commercial servomotor used for gimbal stabilization and with the design and verification of the improved control algorithm based on the inverse char the actuator model. Due to the requirement of the images, where the fast stabilization is needed, a dynamic correction feedback was implemented. And as the gyroscopes sensitive to the UAVs vibrations, the vibrations of gimbal were eliminated by the digital low pass filter. background was experimentally verified by the geological survey of the stone pits in Sedlice, Vechec and Klatov in the Keywords unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), camera gimbal monitoring, photogrammetry, mining areas.
doi:10.46544/ams.v25i1.12 fatcat:vukw3wcg6jgozmebjmdo235ysa