A Comprehensive UAV Indoor Navigation System Based on Vision Optical Flow and Laser FastSLAM

Abstract This paper presents a comprehensive control, navigation, localization and mapping solution for an indoor quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system. Three main sensors are used onboard the quadrotor platform, namely an inertial measurement unit, a downward-looking camera and a scanning laser range finder. With this setup, the UAV is able to estimate its own velocity and position robustly, while flying along the internal walls of a room without collisions. After one complete flight, with the collected data the historic UAV path and the indoor environment can be well estimated. The autonomous navigation part of the system does not require any remote sensory information or off-line computational power, while the mapping is done off-line. Complete flight tests have been carried out to verify fidelity and performance the navigation solution. Key words Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight control, indoor navigation, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), optical flow, laser FastSLA