Abstract

A high resolution remote imaging system using a vertical take-off and landing helicopter- type unmanned air vehicle has been built and successfully tested. The aircraft is navigated using differential GPS and autonomously tracked a set of waypoints defined on Google map. The vertical take-off and landing-type aircraft is chosen due to its high maneuverability and its capability to flight in condensed area with physical obstacles. The aircraft was planned to flight and taken pictures at low altitude changing from 10m to 300m. The experimental results shown that the image resolution in horizontal plan and vertical plan is lower than 3cm and 20cm, respectively. These initial results open a new way for building high resolution remote image for small area and in real-time for diverse civil and military applications.