TY - GEN
T1 - Flying fast and low among obstacles
AU - Scherer, Sebastian
AU - Singh, Sanjiv
AU - Chamberlain, Lyle
AU - Saripalli, Srikanth
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=36348974020&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=36348974020&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363619
DO - 10.1109/ROBOT.2007.363619
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:36348974020
SN - 1424406021
SN - 9781424406029
T3 - Proceedings - IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation
SP - 2023
EP - 2029
BT - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA'07
T2 - 2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, ICRA'07
Y2 - 10 April 2007 through 14 April 2007
ER -