3D Shape Mapping of Obstacle Using Stereo Vision Sensor on Quadrotor UAV

Shape mapping algorithm of unknown obstacle is proposed using stereo vision for a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle. Stereo vision is assumed to be mounted on the quadrotor to obtain a depth map. After detecting an obstacle through the depth map, mapping the shape of the obstacle is performed by extracting the distance information from the depth map along with the information of the quadrotor’s current state. Due to the inherent property of the stereo vision, more precise information can be extracted as the quadrotor moves closer to the obstacle. Guidance command is generated to make the quadrotor move around the obstacle to obtain the information of the obstacle from all directions while the obstacle is maintained inside the image plane during the mapping process. Points with overlapped information are removed by comparing their disparities for computational efficiency. Numerical simulation is performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed mapping algorithm.

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