A high-performance MAV for autonomous navigation in complex 3D environments

Micro aerial vehicles, such as multirotors, are particular well suited for the autonomous monitoring, inspection, and surveillance of buildings, e.g., for maintenance in industrial plants. Key prerequisites for the fully autonomous operation of micro aerial vehicles in complex 3D environments include real-time state estimation, obstacle detection, mapping, and navigation planning. In this paper, we describe an integrated system with a multimodal sensor setup for omnidirectional environment perception and 6D state estimation. Our MAV is equipped with a variety of sensors including a dual 3D laser scanner, three stereo camera pairs, an IMU and a powerful onboard computer to achieve these tasks in real-time. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates the performance of the integrated system.