Autonomous Vehicles for Outdoor Multidomain Mapping

LEONARDO GARBEROGLIO; PATRICIO MORENO; IGNACIO MAS; JUAN I. GIRIBET

Tucuman

Congreso; 2018 IEEE ARGENCON; 2018

IEEE

In the last years, progress has been madeattempting to replace a unique, complex and expensive vehicleequipped with several sensors such as LIDAR, RGB cameras,thermal sensor, etc. with a group of small vehicles, eachof them carrying one sensor. There are several advantagesof these segmented architectures, for instance this allows areduction in the cost of the vehicles (several small vehiclescan be less expensive than one big vehicle), the flexibility tochoose for a mission only those vehicles with the appropriatesensors, the robustness of the system since it can acquireinformation even if one vehicle fails, among others. Theadvantage of segmented architectures is even more noticeableif the vehicles carrying those different sensors, have differentcharacteristics or environments for operations, e.g. aerial,terrestrial or aquatic vehicles. In this work, we present theexperimental results obtained with an ASV (AutonomousSurface Vehicle) and a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) thatcooperate to obtain a topographic survey of the terrain.The ASV is equipped with a LIDAR, meanwhile the UAV isequipped with a monocular RGB camera. The data acquiredis post-processed in order to obtain a detailed map of thecoastline of a creek and the surrounding area.