Omnidirectional Perception for Lightweight MAVs using a Continously Rotating 3D Laser Scanner

Micro aerial vehicles (MAV) are restricted in their size and weight, making the design of sensory systems for these vehicles challenging. We designed a small and lightweight continuously rotating 3D laser scanner—allowing for environment perception in a range of 30 m in almost all directions. This sensor is well suited for applications such as 3D obstacle detection, 6D motion estimation, localisation, and mapping. Reliably perceiving obstacles in the surroundings of the MAV is a prerequisite for fully autonomous flight in complex environments. Due to varying shape and reflectance properties of objects, not all obstacles are perceived in every 3D laser scan (one half rotation of the scanner). Especially farther away from the MAV, multiple scans may be necessary in order to adequately detect an obstacle. In order to increase the probability of detecting obstacles, we aggregate acquired scans over short periods of time in an egocentric grid-based map. We register acquired scans against this local map to estimate the motion of our MAV and to consistently update the map. In experiments, we show that our approaches to pose estimation and laser scan matching allow for reliable aggregation of 3D scans over short periods of time, sufficiently accurate to improve detection probability without causing inaccuracies in the estimation of the position of detected obstacles. Furthermore, we assess the probability of detecting different types of obstacles in varying distances from the MAV.