Development of a Micro Aerial Vehicle

This paper presents a detailed, systematic procedure for developing a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV), which is capable of autonomous flight in GPS-denied environments. This MAV is designed for a gross weight of 490 g and flight endurance of 8 minutes. The hardware structure (including the sensors, processors, and mechanical components), the software architecture (including operating system, navigation, control, and data logging), the communication system, and the ground station unit are discussed in detail. The resulting system is able to autonomously carry out an indoor target searching mission with vision-based navigation relying on a monocular camera.