Aggressive Flight Using Laser Scanner, IMU, & 3D Map

Posted 30 May 2012 at 16:13 UTC by John_RobotsPodcast

Evan Ackerman, writing for IEEE Spectrum's Automaton blog, says

Researchers at MIT CSAIL have decided that slow and obstacle-free flight is boring, so they’ve come up with a way to get MAVs navigating at high speed, indoors, around obstacles, without needing motion tracking or GPS or beacons or any of that nonsense. All they need is a little aircraft that can carry a planar laser rangefinder, an IMU, and a pre-existing 3D occupancy map that the MAV can localize itself in.

This research has been conducted by the Robust Robotics Group (RRG), led by Nicholas Roy. A paper explaining it in detail was presented at ICRA by graduate student Adam Bry. A similar video using a quadrotor (embedded after the break) appears on the personal page of RRG Research Scientist Stefanie Tellex, which is worth a visit for the cat video she's also posted! (IMU = Inertial Measurement Unit)

A Voice-Commandable Robotic Helicopter