**Autonomous Quadrocopter for Search, Count and Localization of Objects**

Nils Gageik, Christian Reul and Sergio Montenegro

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/63568

### **Abstract**

This chapter describes and evaluates the design and implementation of a new fully autonomous quadrocopter, which is capable of self‐reliant search, count and localiza‐ tion of a predefined object on the ground inside a room.

A camera attached to the quadrocopter and directed at the ground is used to find the searched objects and to determine its positions during the autonomous flight in real time. Hence, objects that fulfil the scanning parameters can be found in different positions. Based on its own known position and the position of the object in the picture of the camera, the position of the detected objects can be determined. Thus, repeated detections of objects can be excluded. Consequently, objects can be counted and localized autonomously.

The position of the object is transferred to the ground station and compared with the true position to evaluate the system. Two different search situations and two different strategies, breadth first search (BFS) and depth first search (DFS), are investigated and their results are compared. The evaluation shows the potential, constraints and drawbacks of this approach just as the effects of the search strategy, and the most important parameters and indicators such as field of view (FOV), masking area (MA) and minimal object distance. Moreover, the accuracy, performance and completeness of the search are discussed. The entire system is composed of low‐cost components and constructed from scratch. Its integration in the innovative real‐time operating system RODOS (Real‐time Onboard Dependable Operating System) developed by the German Aerospace Centre is described in detail. RODOS has been developed for embedded systems such as satellites and comparable aerospace systems.

**Keywords:** autonomous UAV, quadrocopter, quadrotor, search and rescue, count, ob‐ ject localization

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
