Abstract
We present a pole inspection system for outdoor environments comprising a high-speed camera on a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aerial platform. The pole inspection task requires a vehicle to fly close to a structure while maintaining a fixed stand-off distance from it. Typical GPS errors make GPS-based navigation unsuitable for this task however.When flying outdoors a vehicle is also affected by aerodynamics disturbances such as wind gusts, so the onboard controller must be robust to these disturbances in order to maintain the stand-off distance. Two problems must therefor be addressed: fast and accurate state estimation without GPS, and the design of a robust controller.We resolve these problems by a) performing visual + inertial relative state estimation and b) using a robust line tracker and a nested controller design. Our state estimation exploits high-speed camera images (100Hz ) and 70Hz IMU data fused in an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). We demonstrate results from outdoor experiments for pole-relative hovering, and pole circumnavigation where the operator provides only yaw commands. Lastly, we show results for image-based 3D reconstruction and texture mapping of a pole to demonstrate the usefulness for inspection tasks.
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Sa, I., Hrabar, S., Corke, P. (2015). Outdoor Flight Testing of a Pole Inspection UAV Incorporating High-speed Vision. In: Mejias, L., Corke, P., Roberts, J. (eds) Field and Service Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 105. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07488-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07488-7_8
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