Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
College/Unit
Statler College of Engineering and Mining Resources
Department/Program/Center
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Abstract
Autonomous navigation of unmanned vehicles in forests is a challenging task. In such environments, due to the canopies of the trees, information from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) can be degraded or even unavailable. Also, because of the large number of obstacles, a previous detailed map of the environment is not practical. In this paper, we solve the complete navigation problem of an aerial robot in a sparse forest, where there is enough space for the flight and the GNSS signals can be sporadically detected. For localization, we propose a state estimator that merges information from GNSS, Attitude and Heading Reference Systems (AHRS), and odometry based on Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors. In our LiDAR-based odometry solution, the trunks of the trees are used in a feature-based scan matching algorithm to estimate the relative movement of the vehicle. Our method employs a robust adaptive fusion algorithm based on the unscented Kalman filter. For motion control, we adopt a strategy that integrates a vector field, used to impose the main direction of the movement for the robot, with an optimal probabilistic planner, which is responsible for obstacle avoidance. Experiments with a quadrotor equipped with a planar LiDAR in an actual forest environment is used to illustrate the effectiveness of our approach.
Digital Commons Citation
Chiella, Antonio C.; Machado, Henrique N.; Teixeira, Bruno O.S.; and Pereira, Guilherme A.S., "GNSS/LiDAR-Based Navigation of an Aerial Robot in Sparse Forests" (2019). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 1552.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/1552
Source Citation
Chiella, A. C. B., Machado, H. N., Teixeira, B. O. S., & Pereira, G. A. S. (2019). GNSS/LiDAR-Based Navigation of an Aerial Robot in Sparse Forests. Sensors, 19(19), 4061. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19194061
Comments
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This article received support from the WVU Libraries' Open Access Author Fund.