Vertical Infrastructure Inspection Using a Quadcopter and Shared Autonomy Control
This paper presents a shared autonomy control scheme for a quadcopter that is suited for inspection of vertical infrastructure—tall man-made structures such as streetlights, electricity poles or the exterior surfaces of buildings. Current approaches to in
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Abstract This paper presents a shared autonomy control scheme for a quadcopter that is suited for inspection of vertical infrastructure—tall man-made structures such as streetlights, electricity poles or the exterior surfaces of buildings. Current approaches to inspection of such structures is slow, expensive, and potentially hazardous. Low-cost aerial platforms with an ability to hover now have sufficient payload and endurance for this kind of task, but require significant human skill to fly. We develop a control architecture that enables synergy between the groundbased operator and the aerial inspection robot. An unskilled operator is assisted by onboard sensing and partial autonomy to safely fly the robot in close proximity to the structure. The operator uses their domain knowledge and problem solving skills to guide the robot in difficult to reach locations to inspect and assess the condition of the infrastructure. The operator commands the robot in a local task coordinate frame with limited degrees of freedom (DOF). For instance: up/down, left/right, toward/away with respect to the infrastructure. We therefore avoid problems of global mapping and navigation while providing an intuitive interface to the operator. We describe algorithms for pole detection, robot velocity estimation with respect to the pole, and position estimation in 3D space as well as the control algorithms and overall system architecture. We present initial results of shared autonomy of a quadcopter with respect to a vertical pole and robot performance is evaluated by comparing with motion capture data.
I. Sa (B) · P. Corke Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected] P. Corke e-mail: [email protected] K. Yoshida and S. Tadokoro (eds.), Field and Service Robotics, Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics 92, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-40686-7_15, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
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1 Introduction The options for inspecting locations above the ground are quite limited, and all are currently cumbersome. Ladders can be used up to a height of 10–15 m but are quite dangerous: each year 160 people are killed and 170,000 injured in falls from ladders in the United States.1 A person can be lifted in the basket of a cherry picker up to a height of 15 m but vehicle access is required and the setup time is significant. Beyond that height a person either climbs up the structure or rappels down from the top, both of which are slow and hazardous. Inspection from manned rotorcraft is possible but is expensive and only suitable in non-urban environments. In recent years we have seen significant advances in small VTOL platforms, in particular quadcopters, driven by advances in power electronics, MEMS sensors and microcontrollers. These systems are low-cost and have sufficient payload and endurance for useful inspection missions. They are also low-weight which reduces the hazard due to their deployment. This paper presents a shared autonomy system for inspection of vertical infrastructure—t
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