High-speed autonomous obstacle avoidance with pushbroom stereo

This thesis presents the design and implementation of a small autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle capable of high-speed flight through complex natural environments. Using only onboard sensing and computation, we perform obstacle detection, planning, and feedback control in realtime. We introduce a novel stereo vision algorithm, pushbroom stereo, capable of detecting obstacles at 120 frames per second without overburdening our lightweight processors. Our use of model-based planning and control techniques allows us to track precise trajectories that avoid obstacles identified by the vision system. We demonstrate a complete working system avoiding trees at up to 14 m/s (31 MPH). To the best of our knowledge this is the fastest lightweight aerial vehicle to perform collision avoidance in such a complex environment.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Barry, Andrew J. (Andrew James)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Russ Tedrake.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/103718

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/103718