Positioning and obstacle detection for quadrotor helicopters

小型无人机系统（UAS）可用于各种应用，低成本的空中检查，监视或监视是有益的。 示例包括房地产摄影、野生动物监测、森林火灾探测、管道和水电线路检查以及人群监测。政府、军事和商业客户继续寻找新的用途，并要求现有平台更易于使用和更高的可靠性。其中一个平台，Aeryon Scout四旋翼飞行器，已经由Aeryon Labs Inc.开发。为了响应客户的要求，我们建议在以下三个方面提高1.2 kg车辆的自主能力：室外定位，室内定位和避障。在每一种情况下，目标都是推进四旋翼飞行器的现有技术水平，提高平台的可靠性，扩大飞行器可以考虑的应用范围，减少安全操作飞行器所需的培训量。该项目将强调使用现有的机载传感器，包括GPS，IMU和双轴万向摄像机。 在户外，当靠近建筑物或树木覆盖时，GPS的可用性可能会受到限制，因此当GPS丢失时，视觉数据将用于增强位置估计和车辆控制。 室内飞行完全不能依靠GPS，因此基于视觉的位置估计对于安全操作变得至关重要。 最后，障碍物检测将通过在当前图像的分割区域上寻找可跟踪的特征来开发，从而能够在有限的计算资源下真实的时间内构建粗略的地图。结果将是一个小型无人机系统，它可以安全地从A点导航到B点而不会遇到障碍物。 目前需要不断警惕的经营者可以大大减轻，和应用程序的视线可能暂时中断，因此可以考虑。 操作员将能够专注于更高级别的使命任务，将位置控制和障碍物检测留给机载系统。

Small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) can be used in a varietyof applications for which low-cost aerial inspection, surveillance or photographyare beneficial. Examples include real-estate photography, wildlife monitoring, forest fire detection, pipeline and hydro line inspection, and crowd monitoring. Government, militaryand commercial customers continue to find new uses and ask for greater ease of use and higher reliabiltyin the platforms currentlyavailable.One such platform, the Aeryon Scout quadrotor vehicle, has been developed byAeryon Labs Inc. of Waterloo, ON. To answer the call of their customers, we propose to improve the autonomous capabilities of the 1.2 kg vehicle in the following three areas: outdoor positioning, indoor positioning and obstacle avoidance. Ineach case, the goal is to advance the current state of the art for quadrotor vehicles and improve the reliability of the platform, extending the range of applications for which the vehicle can be considered and reducing the amount of training needed to safelyoperate the vehicle.The project will emphasize the use of the existing onboard sensors, including GPS, IMU and two-axis gimballed camera. Outdoors, the availabilityof GPS can be limited when operating close to buildings or undertree cover, so vision data will be used to augment position estimation and vehicle control when GPS is lost. Indoor flight cannot relyon GPS at all, and so vision based position estimation becomes critical to safe operation. Finally, obstacle detection will be developed bylooking for trackable features on segmented regionsof the current image, enabling coarse map building in real time with limited computational resources.The result will be a small UAS that can safelynavigate from point A to point B without running into obstacles. The current need for constant vigilence of the operator can be greatlyalleviated, and applications where line of sight maybe temporarilydisrupted can therefore be considered. Operators will be able to focus on higher level mission tasks, leaving position control and obstacle detection to the onboard system.