A vision-based autonomous UAV inspection framework for unknown tunnel construction sites with dynamic obstacles

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xu, Zhefan, Chen, Baihan, Zhan, Xiaoyang, Xiu, Yumeng, Suzuki, Christopher, Shimada, Kenji
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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_version_ 1866909071790047232
author Xu, Zhefan
Chen, Baihan
Zhan, Xiaoyang
Xiu, Yumeng
Suzuki, Christopher
Shimada, Kenji
author_facet Xu, Zhefan
Chen, Baihan
Zhan, Xiaoyang
Xiu, Yumeng
Suzuki, Christopher
Shimada, Kenji
contents Tunnel construction using the drill-and-blast method requires the 3D measurement of the excavation front to evaluate underbreak locations. Considering the inspection and measurement task's safety, cost, and efficiency, deploying lightweight autonomous robots, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), becomes more necessary and popular. Most of the previous works use a prior map for inspection viewpoint determination and do not consider dynamic obstacles. To maximally increase the level of autonomy, this paper proposes a vision-based UAV inspection framework for dynamic tunnel environments without using a prior map. Our approach utilizes a hierarchical planning scheme, decomposing the inspection problem into different levels. The high-level decision maker first determines the task for the robot and generates the target point. Then, the mid-level path planner finds the waypoint path and optimizes the collision-free static trajectory. Finally, the static trajectory will be fed into the low-level local planner to avoid dynamic obstacles and navigate to the target point. Besides, our framework contains a novel dynamic map module that can simultaneously track dynamic obstacles and represent static obstacles based on an RGB-D camera. After inspection, the Structure-from-Motion (SfM) pipeline is applied to generate the 3D shape of the target. To our best knowledge, this is the first time autonomous inspection has been realized in unknown and dynamic tunnel environments. Our flight experiments in a real tunnel prove that our method can autonomously inspect the tunnel excavation front surface. Our software is available on GitHub as an open-source ROS package.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2301_08422
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A vision-based autonomous UAV inspection framework for unknown tunnel construction sites with dynamic obstacles
Xu, Zhefan
Chen, Baihan
Zhan, Xiaoyang
Xiu, Yumeng
Suzuki, Christopher
Shimada, Kenji
Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
Tunnel construction using the drill-and-blast method requires the 3D measurement of the excavation front to evaluate underbreak locations. Considering the inspection and measurement task's safety, cost, and efficiency, deploying lightweight autonomous robots, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), becomes more necessary and popular. Most of the previous works use a prior map for inspection viewpoint determination and do not consider dynamic obstacles. To maximally increase the level of autonomy, this paper proposes a vision-based UAV inspection framework for dynamic tunnel environments without using a prior map. Our approach utilizes a hierarchical planning scheme, decomposing the inspection problem into different levels. The high-level decision maker first determines the task for the robot and generates the target point. Then, the mid-level path planner finds the waypoint path and optimizes the collision-free static trajectory. Finally, the static trajectory will be fed into the low-level local planner to avoid dynamic obstacles and navigate to the target point. Besides, our framework contains a novel dynamic map module that can simultaneously track dynamic obstacles and represent static obstacles based on an RGB-D camera. After inspection, the Structure-from-Motion (SfM) pipeline is applied to generate the 3D shape of the target. To our best knowledge, this is the first time autonomous inspection has been realized in unknown and dynamic tunnel environments. Our flight experiments in a real tunnel prove that our method can autonomously inspect the tunnel excavation front surface. Our software is available on GitHub as an open-source ROS package.
title A vision-based autonomous UAV inspection framework for unknown tunnel construction sites with dynamic obstacles
topic Robotics
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.08422