A Binocular Vision-based Measuring System for UAVs Autonomous Aerial Refueling

In this paper, we present the systematic design and implementation of a binocular vision-based measuring system for autonomous aerial refueling. The hardware configuration of the verification platform is presented, and vision algorithms including feature extraction and pose estimation are employed for estimating the relation between two rotorcrafts. To verify the autonomous aerial refueling of unmanned aerial vehicles, a binocular vision system and an on-board data processing computer are utilized to provide the real-time pose information. Series of experiments are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the overall platform.