Autonomous Cave Surveying with an Aerial Robot

Understand

This paper presents a method for cave surveying in total darkness using an autonomous aerial vehicle equipped with a depth camera for mapping, downward-facing camera for state estimation, and forward and downward lights.

• Traditional methods of cave surveying are labor-intensive and dangerous due to the risk of hypothermia when collecting data over extended periods of time in cold and damp environments, the risk of injury when operating in darkness in rocky or muddy environments, and the potential structural instability of the subterranean environment.
• Although these dangers can be mitigated by deploying robots to map dangerous passages and voids, real-time feedback is often needed to operate robots safely and efficiently.
• Few state-of-the-art, high-resolution perceptual modeling techniques attempt to reduce their high bandwidth requirements to work well with low bandwidth communication channels.