The INSANE dataset: Large number of sensors for challenging UAV flights in Mars analog, outdoor, and out-/indoor transition scenarios

Abstract

For real-world applications, autonomous mobile robotic platforms must be capable of navigating safely in a multitude of different and dynamic environments with accurate and robust localization being a key prerequisite. To support further research in this domain, we present the INSANE datasets (Increased Number of Sensors for developing Advanced and Novel Estimators)—a collection of versatile Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) datasets for cross-environment localization. The datasets provide various scenarios with multiple stages of difficulty for localization methods. These scenarios range from trajectories in the controlled environment of an indoor motion capture facility, to experiments where the vehicle performs an outdoor maneuver and transitions into a building, requiring changes of sensor modalities, up to purely outdoor flight maneuvers in a challenging Mars analog environment to simulate scenarios which current and future Mars helicopters would need to perform. The presented work aims to provide data that reflects real-world scenarios and sensor effects. The extensive sensor suite includes various sensor categories, including multiple Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) and cameras. Sensor data is made available as unprocessed measurements and each dataset provides highly accurate ground truth, including the outdoor experiments where a dual Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) setup provides sub-degree and centimeter accuracy (1-sigma). The sensor suite also includes a dedicated high-rate IMU to capture all the vibration dynamics of the vehicle during flight to support research on novel machine learning-based sensor signal enhancement methods for improved localization. The datasets and post-processing tools are available at: https://sst.aau.at/cns/datasets/insane-dataset/

Strategies for Optimized UAV Surveillance in Various Tasks and Scenarios: A Review

“…As technology advances, human expectations for the exploration of other planets in space are increasing, with two of the most notable targets being the exploration of Mars and the Moon. The communication delays between Mars and Earth mean that robots must have a certain degree of autonomy, able to make decisions and operate without real-time commands, and at the same time, the complex and changing terrain of Mars poses a challenge to the robot's navigation capabilities [249][250][251][252][253]. The past idea of simply using unmanned vehicles for exploration appears to be inadequate in the face of these challenges, which calls for an increase in the synergy between UAVs and unmanned vehicles in the Mars This calls for increased synergy between UAVs and UAVs in the Mars exploration process to address these issues.…”