Vision-based aerial tracking using intelligent excitation

This paper proposes a new technique of intelligent excitation within an adaptive control architecture for aerial tracking using a visual sensor. The adaptive controller is capable of maintaining a relative position for a trailer aircraft with respect to a lead aircraft of unknown size. The only information about the lead aircraft can be deduced from the subtended angle in the image plane of the trailing aircraft. Neither the dimension of the lead aircraft, nor its velocity are assumed to be known to the follower. The control objective of maintaining a prespecified relative range is achieved via an intelligent excitation signal, the properties of which are analyzed in this paper. Simulations illustrate the theoretical results.