We introduce a new approach for on-board autonomous obstacle avoidance for micro air vehicles flying outdoors in close proximity to structure. Our approach uses inverse-range, polar-perspective stereo-disparity maps for obstacle detection and representation, and deploys a closed-loop RRT planner that considers flight dynamics for trajectory generation. While motion planning is executed in 3D space, we reduce collision checking to a fast z-buffer-like operation in disparity space, which allows for significant speed-up compared to full 3d methods. Evaluations in simulation illustrate the robustness of our approach, whereas real world flights under tree canopy demonstrate the potential of the approach.

Date Published: 3 June 2014
PDF: 12 pages
Proc. SPIE 9084, Unmanned Systems Technology XVI, 90840O (3 June 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2055288

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9084:
Unmanned Systems Technology XVI
Robert E. Karlsen; Douglas W. Gage; Charles M. Shoemaker; Grant R. Gerhart, Editor(s)