Low Cost Lightweight Obstacle Detection System for Micro Aerial Vehicles
Mohammad Salah Uddin · 2019 IEEE 6th International Conference on Engineering Technologies and Applied Sciences (ICETAS) · 2019
This paper describes a lightweight obstacle detection system for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). This system is composed of multiple infrared (IR) proximity sensors interconnected through an open source development board. Standard methods for obstacle detection for UAVs commonly rely on sensory systems, such as, cameras and range finders. These sensors are usually very expensive. Moreover, their use is limited by both the payload and the computational resources available on the vehicle. By contrast, proximity sensors are cheap as well as lightweight. They can allow to detect the presence of objects in the nearby without any physical contact. We installed the system on a Parrot AR. Drone. This drone is a MAV with low payload capacity. Experiments in both simulation and real environments have been performed to test the effectiveness of our system.