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Collision-free Autonomous Navigation of A Small UAV Using Low-cost Sensors in GPS-denied Environments

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  • Control Theory and Applications
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Abstract

This paper proposes a novel complete navigation system for autonomous flight of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in GPS-denied environments. The hardware platform used to test the proposed algorithm is a small, custom-built UAV platform equipped with an onboard computer, RGB-D camera, 2D light detection and ranging (LiDAR), and altimeter. The error-state Kalman filter (ESKF) based on the dynamic model for low-cost IMU-driven systems is proposed, and visual odometry from the RGB-D camera and height measurement from the altimeter are fed into the measurement update process of the ESKF. The pose output of the ESKF is then integrated into the open-source simultaneous location and mapping (SLAM) algorithm for pose-graph optimization and loop closing. In addition, the computationally efficient collision-free path planning algorithm is proposed and verified through simulations. The software modules run onboard in real time with limited onboard computational capability. The indoor flight experiment demonstrates that the proposed system for small UAVs with low-cost devices can navigate without collision in fully autonomous missions while establishing accurate surrounding maps.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UAV System Division, Aeronautics Research and Development Head Office, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34133, Korea

    Wonkeun Youn, Hyungsik Choi & Inho Choi

  2. School of Electrical Engineering, KI-AI, KI-R, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 291 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34141, Korea

    Wonkeun Youn & Hyun Myung

  3. School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Korea Aerospace University, 76 Hanggongdaehang-ro Hwajeon-dong, Deokyang-gu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea

    Hayoon Ko & Joong-Hwan Baek

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  1. Wonkeun Youn
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Correspondence to Hyun Myung.

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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Recommended by Associate Editor Shihua Li under the direction of Editor Myo Taeg Lim. This research was supported in part by Study on the Core Technologies of Electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing Aircraft (FR20A00) through National Research Council of Science & Technology and in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT for First-Mover Program for Accelerating Disruptive Technology Development (NRF-2018M3C1B9088328).

Wonkeun Youn received his B.S. degree from the Handong Global University, Pohang, Korea, in 2008 and his M.S. and Ph.D degrees in Robotics Program from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon in 2010 and 2020, respectively. He has been a senior researcher with the UAV System Division, Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), since 2011. His current research interests include multisensor fusion, Bayesian estimation theory, multimodal target tracking, and GPS/INS-based UAV navigation.

Hayoon Ko received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Korea Aerospace University (KAU), Goyang, Korea, in 2017 and 2019, respectively, in information and communication engineering. His current research interests include path planning, image processing, and UAV.

Hyungsik Choi received his Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2011. He has been a principal researcher with the UAV System Division, Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), since 2002. His research interests include flight simulation and control. He has been involved in projects developing UAVs, especially in design and implementation of software for flight dynamics and control.

Inho choi received his Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2012. He has been a principal researcher with the UAV System Division, Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), since 1996. His research interests include flight control algorithm, multi-sensor fusion, collision avoidance of UAV. He has been involved in projects developing UAVs, especially in design and implementation of software for navigation and control.

Joong-Hwan Baek received his B.S. degree from the Korea Aerospace University (KAU), Goyang, Korea, in 1981 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from Oklahoma State University in 1987 and 1991, respectively. Since 1992, he has been a professor with the School of Electronics, Telecommunications and Computer Engineering, KAU. His current research interests include image processing, computer vision, pattern recognition, and multimedia.

Hyun Myung received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1992, 1994, and 1998, respectively, in electrical engineering. He was a senior researcher with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon, from 1998 to 2002; a CTO and the director of the Digital Contents Research Laboratory, Emersys Corporation, Daejeon, from 2002 to 2003; and a principal researcher with the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Yongin, Korea, from 2003 to 2008. Since 2008, he has been a professor with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, KAIST, where he is currently the head of the Robotics Program. From 2019, he has been a Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering. His current research interests include simultaneous localization and mapping, autonomous robot navigation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, structural health monitoring using robotics, and swarm robots.

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Youn, W., Ko, H., Choi, H. et al. Collision-free Autonomous Navigation of A Small UAV Using Low-cost Sensors in GPS-denied Environments. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 19, 953–968 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-019-0797-7

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