Experimental Evaluation of Computer Vision and Machine Learning-Based UAV Detection and Ranging

We consider the problem of vision-based detection and ranging of a target UAV using the video feed from a monocular camera onboard a pursuer UAV. Our previously published work in this area employed a cascade classifier algorithm to locate the target UAV, which was found to perform poorly in complex background scenes. We thus study the replacement of the cascade classifier algorithm with newer machine learning-based object detection algorithms. Five candidate algorithms are implemented and quantitatively tested in terms of their efficiency (measured as frames per second processing rate), accuracy (measured as the root mean squared error between ground truth and detected location), and consistency (measured as mean average precision) in a variety of flight patterns, backgrounds, and test conditions. Assigning relative weights of 20%, 40% and 40% to these three criteria, we find that when flying over a white background, the top three performers are YOLO v2 (76.73 out of 100), Faster RCNN v2 (63.65 out of 100), and Tiny YOLO (59.50 out of 100), while over a realistic background, the top three performers are Faster RCNN v2 (54.35 out of 100, SSD MobileNet v1 (51.68 out of 100) and SSD Inception v2 (50.72 out of 100), leading us to recommend Faster RCNN v2 as the recommended solution. We then provide a roadmap for further work in integrating the object detector into our vision-based UAV tracking system.