An Integrated Teleoperation Assistance System for Collision Avoidance of High-speed UAVs in Complex Environments

Abstract

UAV teleoperation is a demanding task, especially for amateur operators who wish to successfully accomplish their mission without collision. In this work we present an integrated 2D LIDAR based Sense-and-Avoid system which actively assists unskilled human operator in obstacle avoidance, so that the operator can focus on higher-level decisions and global objectives in UAV applications such as search and rescue, farming etc. Specifically, with our perception-assistive vehicle control design, novel adaptive virtual cushion force field (AVCFF) based avoidance strategy, and integrated sensing solution, the proposed UAV teleoperation assistance system is capable of obstacle detection and tracking, as well as automatic avoidance in complex environment where both static and dynamic objects are present. The proposed system is constructed on the basis of Hector Quadrotor open source framework [1], and its effectiveness is demonstrated and validated on a realistic simulated UAV platform in Gazebo simulations where the UAV is operated at a high speed.