Herrera Alarcon, Edwin Paul (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna), Bagheri, Davide (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna), Baris, Gabriele (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna), Mugnai, Michael (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna), Satler, Massimo (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna), Avizzano, Carlo Alberto (Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna)

An Efficient Object-Oriented Exploration Algorithm for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Path Planning II" (WeB3), Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 15:20−15:40, Edessa

2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 15-18, 2021, Athens, Greece

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 18, 2024

Abstract

Autonomous exploration of unknown environments usually focuses on maximizing the volumetric exploration of the surroundings. Object-oriented exploration, on the other hand, tries to minimize the time spent on the localization of some given objects of interest. While the former problem equally considers map growths in any free direction, the latter fosters exploration towards objects of interest partially seen and not yet accurately identified.

The proposed work relates to a novel algorithm that focuses on an object-oriented exploration of unknown environments for aerial robots, able to generate volumetric representations of surroundings, semantically enhanced by labels for each object of interest.

As a case study, this method is applied both in a simulated environment and in real-life experiments on a small aerial platform.