Monocular Visual Odometry for Small UAVs

This paper explores the practical implementation of an algorithm for Monocular Visual Odometry for Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The type of UAV in question are those that are commercially available to the mass market such as those manufactured by DJI. This paper found that the developed algorithm, which requires a constant altitude and gimbal pitch, is a good tool for the estimation of the drone's position and velocity. The current algorithm can be used in scenarios where absolute positional accuracy is not critical.