Towards Autonomous Navigation of an UAV-based Mobile Mapping System
Abstract
For situations, where mapping is neither possible from high altitudes nor from the ground, we are developing an autonomous micro aerial vehicle able to fly at low altitudes in close vicinity of obstacles. This vehicle is based on a MikroKopterTM octocopter platform (maximum total weight:
5kg), and contains a dual frequency GPS board, an IMU, a compass, two stereo camera pairs with
fisheye lenses, a rotating 3D laser scanner, 8 ultrasound sensors, a real-time processing unit, and a
compact PC for on-board ego-motion estimation and obstacle detection for autonomous navigation. A
high-resolution camera is used for the actual mapping task, where the environment is reconstructed in
three dimensions from images, using a highly accurate bundle adjustment. In this contribution, we
describe the sensor system setup and present results from the evaluation of several aspects of the
different subsystems as well as initial results from flight tests
Research Areas
