NOVA: Navigation Via Object-Centric Visual Autonomy for High-Speed Target Tracking in Unstructured GPS-Denied Environments (I)

Abstract

Autonomous aerial target tracking in unstructured and GPS-denied environments remains a fundamental challenge in robotics. Many existing methods rely on motion capture systems, pre-mapped scenes, or feature-based localization to ensure safety and control, limiting their deployment in real-world conditions. We introduce NOVA, a fully onboard, object-centric framework that enables robust target tracking and collision-aware navigation using only a stereo camera and an IMU. Rather than constructing a global map or relying on absolute localization, NOVA formulates perception, estimation, and control entirely in the target’s reference frame. A tightly integrated stack combines a lightweight object detector with stereo depth completion, followed by histogram-based filtering to infer robust target distances under occlusion and noise. These measurements feed a visual-inertial state estimator that recovers the full 6-DoF pose of the robot relative to the target. A nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) plans dynamically feasible trajectories in the target frame. To ensure safety, high-order control barrier functions (CBFs) are constructed online from a compact set of high-risk collision points extracted from depth, enabling real-time obstacle avoidance without maps or dense representations. We validate NOVA across challenging real-world scenarios, including urban mazes, forest trails, and repeated transitions through buildings with intermittent GPS loss and severe lighting change