%0 Journal Article %A Chang Liu and John Nash and Stephen D. Prior %D 2015 %J International Journal of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering %B World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology %I Open Science Index 106, 2015 %T A Low-Cost Vision-Based Unmanned Aerial System for Extremely Low-Light GPS-Denied Navigation and Thermal Imaging %U https://publications.waset.org/pdf/10002835 %V 106 %X This paper presents the design and implementation details of a complete unmanned aerial system (UAS) based on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, focusing on safety, security, search and rescue scenarios in GPS-denied environments. In particular, The aerial platform is capable of semi-autonomously navigating through extremely low-light, GPS-denied indoor environments based on onboard sensors only, including a downward-facing optical flow camera. Besides, an additional low-cost payload camera system is developed to stream both infra-red video and visible light video to a ground station in real-time, for the purpose of detecting sign of life and hidden humans. The total cost of the complete system is estimated to be $1150, and the effectiveness of the system has been tested and validated in practical scenarios. %P 1807 - 1814