Autonomous 3D mapping and surveillance of mines with MAVs

Date
2017
Authors
Edwards, Stuart Robert
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The mapping of mines, both operational and abandoned, is a long, di cult and occasionally dangerous task especially in the latter case. Recent developments in active and passive consumer grade sensors, as well as quadcopter drones present the opportunity to automate these challenging tasks providing cost and safety bene ts. The goal of this research is to develop an autonomous vision-based mapping system that employs quadrotor drones to explore and map sections of mine tunnels. The system is equipped with inexpensive, structured light, depth cameras in place of traditional laser scanners, making the quadrotor setup more viable to produce in bulk. A modi ed version of Microsoft's Kinect Fusion algorithm is used to construct 3D point clouds in real-time as the agents traverse the scene. Finally, the generated and merged point clouds from the system are compared with those produced by current Lidar scanners.
Description
A dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, for the degree of Master of Science. 12 July 2017.
Keywords
Citation
Edwards, Stuart Robert (2017) Autonomous 3D mapping and surveillance of mines with MAVs, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, https://hdl.handle.net/10539/25005
Collections