Dharmadhikari, Mihir Rahul (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), De Petris, Paolo (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Nguyen, Huan (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Kulkarni, Mihir Vinay (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Khedekar, Nikhil Vijay (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Alexis, Kostas (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Manhole Detection and Traversal for Exploration of Ballast Water Tanks Using Micro Aerial Vehicles

Scheduled for presentation during the Regular Session "Path Planning I" (WeA3), Wednesday, June 7, 2023, 12:00−12:20, Room 464

2023 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS), June 6-9, 2023, Lazarski University, Warsaw, Poland

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on April 26, 2024

Abstract

This paper presents a method for the autonomous exploration of multiple compartments of a Ballast Water Tank inside a vessel using Micro Aerial Vehicles. Navigation across the compartments of ballast tanks often requires the robot to pass through narrow cross-section ``manholes'' (e.g., 0.8x0.6m). Hence, this work presents an algorithm to explicitly detect and localize such manholes using 3D LiDAR data and a strategy to reliably navigate through them to enable autonomous exploration of multiple compartments of the tank. Two ablation studies are presented analyzing the effective 3D space with respect to the manhole in which reliable detection takes place. Furthermore, the method is evaluated onboard a collision-tolerant aerial robot in two autonomous exploration experiments in relevant mock-up scenarios.