No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are platforms that received great attention during the last decade. Recently, the mining industry has been considering the usage of aerial autonomous platforms in their processes. This article initially investigates potential application scenarios for this technology in mining. Moreover, one of the main tasks refer to surveillance and maintenance of infrastructure assets. Employing these robots for underground surveillance processes of areas like shafts, tunnels or large voids after blasting, requires among others the development of elaborate navigation modules. This paper proposes a method to assist the navigation capabilities of MAVs in challenging mine environments, like tunnels and vertical shafts. The proposed method considers the use of Potential Fields method, tailored to implement a sense-and-avoid system using a minimal ultrasound-based sensory system. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

No abstract

This article establishes a novel Non linear Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme for the navigation of a MAV (Micro Aerial Vehicle) in constrained environments, such as narrow passages, multi-obstacle populated spaces and tight openings. The proposed NMPC optimization framework is based on the Proximal Averaged Newton type method for Optimal Control (PANOC) and has the merit to employ a penalty method for the proper consideration of the obstacles and other environmental constraints during the navigation. The proposed scheme has the ability to be a fast solution for the navigation of MAVs that can be directly applied online and thus it is creating a powerful navigation framework for demanding flights. For achieving such an agile and fast aerial navigation, the article will also present the proposed penalty creation methodology for dealing with the obstacle avoidance and the space constraint navigation. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed scheme will be demonstrated by multiple simulation results under constrained and demanding environments.

This article proposes a Deep Learning (DL) method to enable fully autonomous flights for low-cost Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) in unknown dark underground mine tunnels. This kind of environments pose multiple challenges including lack of illumination, narrow passages, wind gusts and dust. The proposed method does not require accurate pose estimation and considers the flying platform as a floating object. The Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) supervised image classifier method corrects the heading of the MAV towards the center of the mine tunnel by processing the image frames from a single on-board camera, while the platform navigates at constant altitude and desired velocity references. Moreover, the output of the CNN module can be used from the operator as means of collision prediction information. The efficiency of the proposed method has been successfully experimentally evaluated in multiple field trials in an underground mine in Sweden, demonstrating the capability of the proposed method in different areas and illumination levels.

This article presents an aerial tool towards the autonomous cooperative coverage and inspection of a 3D infrastructure using multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). In the presented approach the UAVs are relying only on their onboard computer and sensory system, deployed for inspection of the 3D structure. In this application each agent covers a different part of the scene autonomously, while avoiding collisions. The visual information collected from the aerial team is collaboratively processed to create the 3D model. The performance of the overall setup has been experimentally evaluated in a realistic outdoor infrastructure inspection experiments, providing sparse and dense 3D reconstruction of the inspected structures.