Obstacle Avoidance Method for UAVs using Polar Grid

• Published in: 멀티미디어학회논문지 Vol. 23; no. 8; pp. 1088 - 1098
• Main Authors: Pant, Sudarshan, Lee, Sangdon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Korean
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Polar Grid; Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; Obstacle Avoidance; Field of View
• ISSN: 1229-7771

This paper proposes an obstacle avoidance method using a depth polar grid. Depth information is a crucial factor for determining the safe path for collision-free navigation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as it can perceive the distance to the obstacles effectively. However, the existing depth-camera-based approaches for obstacle avoidance require computational y expensive path planning algorithms. We propose a simple navigation method using the polar-grid of the depth information obtained from the camera with narrow field-of-view(FOV). The effectiveness of the approach was validated by a series of experiments using software-in-the-loop simulation in a realistic outdoor environment. The experimental results show that the proposed approach successfully avoids obstacles using a single depth camera with limited FOV.