High precision marker based localization and movement on the ceiling employing an aerial robot with top mounted omni wheel drive system

Abstract

While aerial vehicles have become more and more popular in the hobbyist sector as a platform for photography and cinematography, currently there is little utilization of aerial vehicles in an industrial environment. In this work, we describe our efforts to develop an aerial robotics platform with the ability to traverse a ceiling with high stability and precision using a top mounted omni wheel drive system and an AR-marker system. The marker system has been extended to incorporate the use of dual camera sensor fusion. The proposed system is specifically designed and planned to be suitable for a real world industrial assignment, namely the setting of painted ink-marker used as an orientation for drilling, measuring or maintenance tasks on the ceiling in an infrastructure inspection work environment. We show with test flights the feasibility of this approach and the ability of the developed platform to do high precision localization and positioning relative to an AR-marker in order to perform an ink-marker placement task.