Skip to main content

Autonomous Guidance for a UAS Along a Staircase

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Visual Computing (ISVC 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 9474))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 2857 Accesses

Abstract

In the quest for fully autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UAS), multiple challenges are faced. For enabling autonomous UAS navigation in indoor environments, one of the major bottlenecks is the capability to autonomously traverse narrow 3D - passages, like staircases. This paper presents a novel integrated system that implements a semi-autonomous navigation system for a quadcopter. The navigation system permits the UAS to detect a staircase using only the images provided by an on-board monocular camera. A 3D model of this staircase is then automatically reconstructed and this model is used to guide the UAS to the top of the detected staircase. For validating the methodology, a proof of concept is created, based on the Parrot AR.Drone 2.0 which is a cheap commercial off-the-shelf quadcopter.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/olivierdm/thesis2015/raw/master/THESIS-DE_MEYST-GOETHALS-2015.pdf.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/olivierdm/thesis2015.

  3. 3.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPZkTI9SgHYo5-yVoVRwC-g.

References

  1. De Cubber, G., Doroftei, D., Serrano, D., Chintamani, K., Sabino, R., Ourevitch, S.: The eu-icarus project: developing assistive robotic tools for search and rescue operations. In: IEEE International Symposium on Safety, Security, and Rescue Robotics, Sweden. IEEE, RAS (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Nikolic, J., Burri, M., Rehder, J., Leutenegger, S., Huerzeler, C., Siegwart, R.: A UAV system for inspection of industrial facilities. In: 2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference, pp. 1–8 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Yamauchi, B., Rudakevych, P.: Griffon: a man portable hybrid UGV/UAV. Ind. Robot Int. J. 31, 443–450 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Klein, G., Murray, D.: Parallel tracking and mapping for small AR workspaces. In: Proceedings on Sixth IEEE and ACM International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2007), Nara, Japan (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Engel, J., Schöps, T., Cremers, D.: LSD-SLAM: Large-Scale Direct Monocular SLAM. In: Fleet, D., Pajdla, T., Schiele, B., Tuytelaars, T. (eds.) ECCV 2014, Part II. LNCS, vol. 8690, pp. 834–849. Springer, Heidelberg (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Lu, X., Manduchi, R.: Detection and localization of curbs and stairways using stereo vision. Int. Conf. Robot. Autom. (ICRA) 4, 4648 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Lee, Y.H., Leung, T.S., Medioni, G.: Real-time staircase detection from a wearable stereo system. In: International Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 3770–3773 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Delmerico, J.A., Baran, D., David, P., Ryde, J., Corso, J.J.: Ascending stairway modeling from dense depth imagery for traversability analysis, pp. 2283–2290 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Pérez-Yus, A., López-Nicolás, G., Guerrero, J.J.: Detection and modelling of staircases using a wearable depth sensor. In: Agapito, L., Bronstein, M.M., Rother, C. (eds.) ECCV 2014 Workshops. LNCS, vol. 8927, pp. 449–463. Springer, Heidelberg (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Se, S., Brady, M.: Vision-based detection of staircases, vol. 1, pp. 535–540 (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Bills, C., Chen, J., Saxena, A.: Autonomous mav flight in indoor environments using single image perspective cues. In: International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Von Gioi, R.G., Jakubowicz, J., Morel, J.M., Randall, G.: Lsd: a line segment detector. Image Process. Line 2, 5 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Viola, P., Jones, M.: Robust real-time object detection. Int. J. Comput. Vis. 4, 34–47 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Saberian, M., Vasconcelos, N.: Boosting algorithms for detector cascade learning. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 15, 2569–2605 (2014)

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  15. Foley, J.D., Van Dam, A., Feiner, S.K., Hughes, J.F., Phillips, R.L.: Introduction to Computer Graphics, vol. 55. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1994)

    MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgment

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 285417 (ICARUS).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Geert De Cubber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

De Meyst, O., Goethals, T., Balta, H., De Cubber, G., Haelterman, R. (2015). Autonomous Guidance for a UAS Along a Staircase. In: Bebis, G., et al. Advances in Visual Computing. ISVC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9474. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27857-5_42

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27857-5_42

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-27856-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-27857-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics