Factors Affecting 3D Reconstruction of Micro Aerial Vehicles

Abstract

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) have created a great impact in robotics research particularly in aerial robotics. Different studies have been done incorporating either single or mutliple quadrotors in their work. Typically, studies with single quadrotor uses onboard computing, contains high powered sensors like Laser Range Finders (LRF), and often are big. In the contrary, smaller quadrotors doesn’t have the capacity to do those though it can handle low powered sensors and devices. With these limits, the study sought for the possibility of applying collaborative mapping in the 3D reconstruction by analyzing the factors affecting it such as number of quadrotors, varying height, and formations. Here, we have found that the number of points, the Mean Reprojection Error (MRE), and the number of observations changes significantly depending on the type of formation used.