A method, system, and apparatus for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to autonomously reconstruct overflown terrain and detect safe landing sites. A UAV autonomously acquires on-board pose estimates from an on-board visual-inertial-range odometry method during flight. The on-board pose estimates are utilized as a pose prior and to regain metric scale during three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction. The on-board pose estimates are corrected based on a bundle adjustment approach using previously acquired images. 3D reconstruction is performed based on multiple captured images taken from an on-board camera. Range data from the multiple captured images is fused into a multi-resolution height map. A safe landing site on the terrain is detected based on the multi-resolution height map.
UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEM (UAS) AUTONOMOUS TERRAIN MAPPING AND LANDING SITE DETECTION
2023-08-03
Patent
Electronic Resource
English
Autonomous Landing of Unmanned Rotorcraft Aerial Vehicle - Laser Scanner Based Terrain Mapping
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2009
|