REAL: Rapid Exploration with Active Loop-Closing toward Large-Scale 3D Mapping using UAVs

Understand

Exploring an unknown environment without colliding with obstacles is one of the essentials of autonomous vehicles to perform diverse missions such as structural inspections, rescues, deliveries, and so forth.

• Therefore, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are fast, agile, and have high degrees of freedom, have been widely used.
• However, previous approaches have two limitations: a) First, they may not be appropriate for exploring large-scale environments because they mainly depend on random sampling-based path planning that causes unnecessary movements.
• b) Second, they assume the pose estimation is accurate enough, which is the most critical factor in obtaining an accurate map.