Drones Guiding Drones: Cooperative Navigation of a Less-Equipped Micro Aerial Vehicle in Cluttered Environments

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F68407700%3A21230%2F24%3A00379083" target="_blank" >RIV/68407700:21230/24:00379083 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS58592.2024.10802770" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS58592.2024.10802770</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IROS58592.2024.10802770" target="_blank" >10.1109/IROS58592.2024.10802770</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Drones Guiding Drones: Cooperative Navigation of a Less-Equipped Micro Aerial Vehicle in Cluttered Environments

Original language description

Reliable deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in cluttered unknown environments requires accurate sensors for Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-denied localization and obstacle avoidance. Such a requirement limits the usage of cheap and micro-scale vehicles with constrained payload capacity if industrial-grade reliability and precision are required. This paper investigates the possibility of offloading the necessity to carry heavy sensors to another member of the UAV team while preserving the desired capability of the smaller robot intended for exploring narrow passages. A novel cooperative guidance framework offloading the sensing requirements from a minimalistic secondary UAV to a superior primary UAV is proposed. The primary UAV constructs a dense occupancy map of the environment and plans collision-free paths for both UAVs to ensure reaching the desired secondary UAV’s goals even in areas not accessible by the bigger robot. The primary UAV guides the secondary UAV to follow the planned path while tracking the UAV using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based relative localization. The proposed approach was verified in real-world experiments with a heterogeneous team of a 3D LiDAR-equipped primary UAV and a micro-scale camera-equipped secondary UAV moving autonomously through unknown cluttered GNSS-denied environments with the proposed framework running fully on board the UAVs.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

D - Article in proceedings

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

20204 - Robotics and automatic control

Project

Result was created during the realization of more than one project. More information in the Projects tab.

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Article name in the collection

2024 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2024)

ISBN

979-8-3503-7770-5

ISSN

2153-0858

e-ISSN

2153-0866

Number of pages

8

Pages from-to

10597-10604

Publisher name

IEEE

Place of publication

Piscataway

Event location

Abu Dhabi

Event date

Oct 14, 2024

Type of event by nationality

WRD - Celosvětová akce

UT code for WoS article

001433985300389