Autonomous quadcopter cartographer

Abstract

Research into autonomous navigation of Micro-Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) has become

increasingly popular in recent years. Outdoor autonomous features rely mainly on

GPS technology to estimate its position, orientation and velocity. Due to the weak

GPS signals in indoor areas, the same method cannot be used for indoor

environments.

This is a combined project among three Renaissance Engineering Programme (REP)

students aiming to design and create a quadcopter capable of performing autonomous

SLAM and exploration algorithms. All three members will be focusing on three

different aspects of the quadcopter project. At the end, the different contributions

made in those three aspects should culminate together as much as possible into an

integrated product which aims to meet the objectives of this project.

This report covers details of essential hardware that is mounted on the quadcopter.

These include a LIDAR laser scanner, a pcDuino development board for high-level

computations, a Pixhawk flight controller module for low-level processing, and a

power distribution board. In addition, this report also covers the development process

and implementation of a quadcopter platform that uses a LIDAR sensor for

navigation.

The two main control frameworks of a quadcopter that will be focused on in depth is

the altitude and position control. As there are various methods that can achieve

successful implementation of the two control frameworks, this report aims to find the

most suitable one for application to this project. Test flights are also carried out to

ensure that theories on paper are proven to be true in real-world conditions as well.

Other aspects of the project will also be mentioned briefly in this report. One of them

includes an investigation of the possibility of using a ducted frame design to improve

thrust performance, while another presents an overview of SLAM and selfexploration

methods to be used in indoor GPS-denied environments.