(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011-08)
Chowdhary, Girish; Sobers, D. Michael, Jr.; Pravitra, Chintasid; Christmann, Hans Claus; Wu, Allen; Hashimoto, Hiroyuki; Ong, Chester; Kalghatgi, Roshan; Johnson, Eric N.
This paper describes the details of a Quadrotor miniature unmanned aerial system capable of autonomously exploring cluttered indoor areas without relying on any external navigational aids such as GPS. A streamlined Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithm is implemented onboard the vehicle to fuse information from a scanning
laser range sensor, an inertial measurement unit, and an altitude sonar to provide relative
position, velocity, and attitude information. This state information, with a self-generated
map, is used to implement a frontier-based exhaustive search of an indoor environment.
To ensure the SLAM algorithm has sufficient information to form a reliable solution, the
guidance algorithm ensures the vehicle approaches frontier waypoints through a path that remains within sensor range of indoor structures. Along with a detailed description of the
system, simulation and hardware testing results are presented.