Human Supervised Multirotor UAV System Design for Inspection Applications

Abstract

Multirotor UAVs are widely used for aerial inspection applications where missions are accomplished either via manual or autonomous control. Human controlled UAVs require trained pilots which can be a barrier from using the technology for general inspection personnel. Fully autonomous navigation, which employs onboard sensing, planning and coverage algorithms, is effective but comes with the cost of development and operational complexities. A human supervised UAV system design is presented where a deployed aerial vehicle operates in semi-autonomous mode. An operator, who is equipped with a smart handheld laser pointer, gives the UAV global guiding directions to reach the inspection target. The UAV is equipped with onboard vision sensing for local planning and target identification in addition to video streaming or recording. System operation is validated in indoor fliaht tests.