We present an error tolerant path planning algorithm for Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAV) swarms. We assume a MAV navigation system without relying on GPS-like techniques. The MAV find their navigation path by using their sensors and cameras, in order to identify and follow a series of visual landmarks. The visual landmarks lead the MAV towards the target destination. MAVs are assumed to be unaware of the terrain and locations of the landmarks. Landmarks are also assumed to hold a-priori information, whose interpretation (by the MAVs) is prone to errors. We distinguish two types of errors, namely, recognition and advice. Recognition errors are due to misinterpretation of sensed data and a-priori information or confusion of objects (e.g., due to faulty sensors). Advice errors are due to outdated or wrong information associated to the landmarks (e.g., due to weather conditions). Our path planning algorithm proposes swarm cooperation. MAVs communicate and exchange information wirelessly, to minimize the recognition and advice error ratios. By doing this, the navigation system experiences a quality amplification in terms of error reduction. As a result, our solution successfully provides an adaptive error tolerant navigation system. Quality amplification is parametetrized with regard to the number of MAVs. We validate our approach with theoretical proofs and numeric simulations.
The use of the entropy technique in @cite_16 @cite_8 can also be used before processing the images with the visual recognition classifier, to reduce the computational cost (i.e., by processing only those images with high entropy, the * mav can avoid that a costly classifier processes images with low likelihood of containing landmarks.
@cite_16 @cite_8
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We introduce a novel method for landmark search and detection for the autonomous indoor navigation of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) using visual topological maps. The main contribution of this paper is the combination of the entropy of an image, with a dual feedforward-feedback controller for the task of object landmark search and detection. As the entropy of an image is directly related to the presence of a unique object or the presence of different objects inside the image (the lower the entropy of an image, the higher its probability of containing a single object inside it; and conversely, the higher the entropy, the higher its probability of containing several different objects inside it), we propose to implement landmark and object search and detection as a process of entropy maximization which corresponds to an image containing several target landmarks candidates. After converging to an image with maximum entropy containing several candidates for the target landmark, the UAV´s controller switches to the landmark´s homing mode based on a dual feed-forward feedback controller aimed at driving the UAV towards the target landmark. After the presentation of the theoretical foundations of the entropy-based search. The paper ends with the experimental work performed for its validation. We introduce a hybrid algorithm for the self-semantic location and autonomous navigation of robots using entropy-based vision and visual topological maps. In visual topological maps the visual landmarks are considered as leave points for guiding the robot to reach a target point (robot homing) in indoor environments. These visual landmarks are defined from images of relevant objects or characteristic scenes in the environment. The entropy of an image is directly related to the presence of a unique object or the presence of several different objects inside it: the lower the entropy the higher the probability of containing a single object inside it and, conversely, the higher the entropy the higher the probability of containing several objects inside it. Consequently, we propose the use of the entropy of images captured by the robot not only for the landmark searching and detection but also for obstacle avoidance. If the detected object corresponds to a landmark, the robot uses the suggestions stored in the visual topological map to reach the next landmark or to finish the mission. Otherwise, the robot considers the object as an obstacle and starts a collision avoidance maneuver. In order to validate the proposal we have defined an experimental framework in which the visual bug algorithm is used by an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in typical indoor navigation tasks.