Background
Unmanned vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used for performing surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration tasks in a wide variety of environments for military and civilian applications. A UAV may be manually controlled by a remote user, or may operate in a semi-autonomous or fully autonomous manner. Such UAVs can include sensors configured to collect data from the surrounding environment.
Existing approaches for obtaining environmental data may be less than optimal in some instances. For example, the accuracy of the environmental data may be limited based on the capabilities of the particular sensor type used to collect the data. Inaccurate environmental data may have a detrimental effect on UAV functions.
Invention Description
Researchers at Arizona State University have developed EarthRover, an autonomous tricycle that maps out features of urban environments and generates 3D topology maps of specific areas. The EarthRover maps out different features of urban environments, then generates data for a robust 3D environmental analysis. The tricycle has a capable GPS-enabled vision based autonomous navigation on paved and unpaved roads. This allows the execution of repeatable paths that are either learned by the system from experimental drives by the driver, or through specified or optimized mission plans.
Potential Applications:
- Urban planning and environmental analysis
- Geospatial data collection and GIS mapping
- Construction and engineering
Benefits and Advantages:
- Affordable and sustainable
- Usable by human operator
- Learns navigation and surveying parameters from manual rider operation