An Autonomous Intercept Drone with Image-based Visual Servo

Abstract

For most people on the ground, facing an unwanted drone buzzing around overhead, there is not a lot that we can do, especially if it is out of gun (radio wave gun or shotgun) range. A solution to this is to use intercept drones that seek out and bring down other drones. In order to make the interception autonomous, an image-based visual servo algorithm is designed with a forward-looking monocular camera. The control command, namely the angular velocity and thrust, is generated for intercept drones to implement accurate and fast interception. The proposed method is demonstrated in both hardware-in-the-loop simulation and demonstrative flight experiments.