A mono-camera and scanning laser range finder based UAV indoor navigation system

This paper presents a comprehensive control and navigation scheme for an indoor UAV system. In addition to the inertial measurement unit commonly used onboard of most UAVs, the testbed quadrotor platform is also equipped with a mono-camera looking downwards and a laser range finder capable of scanning a level plane. With this setup, the UAV is able to estimate its own velocity and position robustly, while flying along the internal walls of a room without collision. The whole system does not require any remote sensory information or off-line computational power. All algorithms are self-sustained and running onboard in real time. Complete flight tests have been carried out to verify the solution.