Formation-based 3D mapping of micro aerial vehicles

• Main Author: Padilla, Mark Lester F.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2018
• Subjects: Micro air vehicles; Micro air vehicles > Control systems
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5438
• Institution: De La Salle University

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has impacted a lot to the research community, particularly localization and mapping. There are a lot of advanced Laser Range Finders and RGBD cameras present in the market today that provide accurate 3D maps, though the concerns about these are their power requirement and weight. This means, smaller MAVs cannot be able to handle such kind of devices. The study explores the possibility of collaborative mapping from multiples of simple cameras to obtain an accurate map similar to that of the LRF and RGBD cameras. Formations were introduced on the swarm to help them map the environment better. The study also seeks to determine the effects in reconstruction when N number of MAVs, operating at varying heights, and di erent formations are used. COLMAP's Structure from Motion pipeline are used for the reconstruction and to provide the data such as the number of points, mean reprojection error, and the number of observations. The results shows that the formations significantly act the number of points, the value of the mean reprojection error, and the number of observations, whereas the v-formation has both a balance in number of points and value of mean reprojecton error. Moreover, an object detection algorithm is employed to determine the objects present within the periphery of the camera.