Navigation and Control for Micro Aerial Vehicles in GPS-Denied Environments

Abstract

Micro-air vehicles have been increasingly employed in diverse research projects in both military and civilian applications. That is because their high maneuverability and accurate mobility. Many of them have been successfully used in outdoor areas, while some have been operated indoors. However, very few have dedicated especial attention to the case of high pitch and roll movements while doing scan-line based odometry. In this paper, we present a general approach consisting of algorithms that enable small aerial robots to fly indoors. We solve the overall problem of large movement change in pitch and roll angles by improving the standard scan matching algorithm. We also validate the effectiveness of the upgraded algorithm by a set of experiments that demonstrate the ability of a small quad-rotor to autonomously operate in cluttered indoor scenarios.