Collaborative obstacle avoidance method of surface and aerial drones based on acoustic information and optical image

Abstract

Recently, the researches of aerial drones are actively executed in various areas, the researches of surface drones and underwater drones are also executed in marine areas. In case of surface drones, they essentially utilize acoustic information by the sonar and consequently have the local information in the obstacle avoidance as the sonar has the limitations due to the beam width and detection range. In order to overcome this, more global method that utilizes optical images by the camera is required. Related to this, the aerial drone with the camera is desirable as the obstacle detection of the surface drone with the camera is impossible in case of the existence of clutters. However, the dynamic-floating aerial drone is not desirable for the long-term operation as its power consumption is high. To solve this problem, a collaborative obstacle avoidance method based on the acoustic information by the sonar of the surface drone and the optical image by the camera of the static-floating aerial drone is proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed method, the collaborative obstacle avoidances of a MSD(Micro Surface Drone) with an OAS(Obstacle Avoidance Sonar) and a BMAD(Balloon-based Micro Aerial Drone) with a camera are executed. The test results show the possibility of real applications and the need for additional studies.