Development of Autonomous Aero-Robot and Its Application to Safety and Disaster Prevention

本研究的目的是开发在发生大地震、火灾、火山爆发等灾害时能够支援各种活动的完全自主的航空机器人。第一年，不仅进行了航空机器人硬件的基本设计和开发，还进行了飞行模拟器的开发。研制了GPS-INS组合导航系统，使其定位误差减小到2cm以内，满足了先进飞行控制系统的需要。提出了利用神经网络设计鲁棒控制系统以抵抗各种不确定性的方法。对于一个控制界面，语音命令系统的开发和评估。通过对飞行数据的分析，可以看出新手和熟练操作员之间的区别。第二年，我们对航空机器人的硬件进行了改进，采用了先进的飞行控制系统，并成功地使用了神经网络或自适应控制器的控制器进行了自主飞行，仿真结果表明，所设计的控制器比传统的飞行控制器有明显的上级优越性。此外，还对语音指挥系统进行了改进，使其能够在嘈杂的环境中使用，并具有足够的稳定性，从而使该指挥系统在实际应用中发挥了更大的作用。第三年，开发了用于灾害现场信息收集的系统。由于采用了基于Web的数据报传输方式，所开发的航摄图像采集与传输系统比以前的系统更易于使用，成本更低，飞行实验表明了其有效性。此外，本文还提出了一种利用立体相机和GPS/INS组合导航系统联合制作三维地形图的方法，该方法制作的三维地形图具有较高的精度和足够的分辨率，可用于灾害现场调查等。

The objective of this research is to develop a complete autonomous aero-robot, which can support various activities in an occasion of disaster such as large earthquakes, fires, and volcanic eruption.In the first year, not only the basic design and development of the hardware of the aero-robot but also development of the flight simulator were carried out. GPS-INS hybrid navigation system, which is necessary for advanced flight control systems, was developed and the error of the position is reduced to only 2 cm. Moreover methods to design robust control system against various kinds of uncertainties by use of neural networks were proposed. For a control interface, voice command system was developed and evaluated. Then the difference between novice operators and skilled operators became clear as a result of analysis of the flight data.In the second year, the hardware of aero-robot was improved for advanced flight control systems, and we made success in autonomous flight by use of controllers by use of neural networks or adaptive controller, and it is shown that controllers designed by the proposed methods are much superior to the conventional flight controllers. Moreover, the voice command system was also improved so that it can be used in noisy environment with enough stability, then the command system became much more useful in practical applications.In the third year, systems, which were useful in information gathering at disaster site, were developed. Because web based datagram delivery is adopted, the developed system to gather and deliver aerial video and photograph is much easier to use and much cheaper than before and flight experiments showed its effectiveness. Moreover a method to make 3D terrain map by use of a stereo camera and GPS-INS hybrid navigation system together is developed and it is shown that the 3D map is very accurate and has enough resolution for investigation at disaster site and so on.