Online world modeling and path planning for an unmanned helicopter

Mission scenarios beyond line of sight or with limited ground control station access require capabilities for autonomous safe navigation and necessitate a continuous extension of existing and potentially outdated information about obstacles. The presented approach is a novel synthesis of techniques for 3D environment perception and global path planning. A locally bounded sensor fusion approach is used to extract sparse obstacles for global incremental path planning in an anytime fashion. During the flight, a stereo camera checks the field of view along the flight path ahead by analyzing depth images. A 3D occupancy grid is built incrementally. To reduce the high data rate and storage demands of grid-type maps, an approximated polygonal world model is created. For a compacted representation, it uses prisms and ground planes. This enables the system to constantly renew and update its knowledge about obstacles. An incremental heuristic path planner uses both a-priori information as well as incremental obstacle updates to assure a collision-free path at any time. Mapping results from flight tests show the functionality of onboard world modeling from real sensor data. Path planning feasibility is demonstrated within a simulation environment considering world model changes inside the vehicle’s field of view.