Paper Info
Title
Flying Fast and Low Among Obstacles
Abstract
Safe autonomous flight is essential for widespread acceptance of aircraft that must fly close to the ground. We have developed a method of collision avoidance that can be used in three dimensions in much the same way as autonomous ground vehicles that navigate over unexplored terrain. Safe navigation is accomplished by a combination of online environmental sensing, path planning and collision avoidance. Here we report results with an autonomous helicopter that operates at low elevations in uncharted environments some of which are densely populated with obstacles such as buildings, trees and wires. We have recently completed over 1000 successful runs in which the helicopter traveled between coarsely specified waypoints separated by hundreds of meters, at speeds up to 10 meters/sec at elevations of 5-10 meters above ground level. The helicopter safely avoids large objects like buildings and trees but also wires as thin as 6 mm. We believe this represents the first time an air vehicle has traveled this fast so close to obstacles. Here we focus on the collision avoidance method that learns to avoid obstacles by observing the performance of a human operator.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363619
ICRA
Keywords
Field
DocType
online environmental sensing,mobile robots,helicopters,aircraft,autonomous helicopter,aerospace robotics,path planning,navigation,aircraft control,collision avoidance,autonomous flight,testing,high altitude,complex system,natural disaster,three dimensions
Motion planning,Human operator,Terrain,Aerospace engineering,Collision,Environmental sensing,Ground vehicles,Engineering,Aerospace robotics,Mobile robot
Conference
Volume
Issue
ISSN
2007
1
1050-4729 E-ISBN : 1-4244-0602-1
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
1-4244-0602-1
25
2.13
References 
Authors
16
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sebastian Scherer152257.76
Sanjiv Singh22388217.44
Lyle Chamberlain312911.73
Srikanth Saripalli456460.11