A Cost Effective Tracking System for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

In this work we address the problem of object tracking in a largely unknown dynamic environment under the additional constraint of real-time operation and limited computational power. The main design directives remain that of real time execution and low price, high availability components. It is in a sense an investigation for the minimum required hardware and algorithmic complexity to accomplish the desired tasks. We present a system that is based on simple techniques such as template matching adapted for use in a dynamically changing environment. After development, the system was evaluated as to its suitability in a traffic monitoring application where it demonstrated adequate performance.