Autonomous altitude measurement and landing area detection for indoor UAV applications

Fully autonomous navigation of unmanned vehicles, without relying on pre-installed tags or markers, still remains a challenge especially for GPS-denied areas and complex indoor environments. Robust altitude control and safe landing zone detection are two important tasks for indoor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for indoor UAVs to control their altitudes, and autonomously detect safe landing zones without relying on any markers, special setups, or assuming that the environment is known. The proposed method employs both depth data and RGB images to detect and also track the safe landing zones.