Experiment on Pinhole Model Distance Calculation for Drone Navigation

Drone navigation is a complex process due to the limitation of computing power available in the drone. To overcome this problem there is a need to develop a low computing cost method of navigation. The basic of navigation is the ability to determine the drone’s position, whether absolute or relative. This experiment was conducted to see the feasibility of using pinhole camera model to determine drone position relative to a target object. Two experiments were conducted: the static experiment and dynamic experiment. The static experiment shows a MAPE of $\mathrm{1 3 \%}$ in determining distance of target object relative to drone. While dynamic experiment shows an error of $\mathrm{6} \mathbf{c m}$ in navigation the drone to a target location. The result of the experiment shows that the pinhole model can be used as a low-cost drone navigation method.