OMNIDIRECTIONAL PERCEPTION FOR LIGHTWEIGHT UAVS USING A CONTINUOUSLY ROTATING 3D LASER SCANNER

Abstract. Many popular unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are restricted in their size and weight, making the design of sensory systems for these robots challenging. We designed a small and lightweight continuously rotating 3D laser scanner – allowing for environment perception in a range of 30 m in almost all directions. This sensor it well suited for applications such as 3D obstacle detection, 6D motion estimation, localization, and mapping. We aggregate the distance measurements in a robot-centric grid-based map. To estimate the motion of our multicopter, we register 3D laser scans towards this local map. In experiments, we compare the laser-based ego-motion estimate with ground-truth from a motion capture system. Overall, we can build an accurate 3D obstacle map and can estimate the vehicle's trajectory by 3D scan registration.