UAV obstacle avoidance using RGB-D system

This work proposes an obstacle avoidance strategy for UAV navigation in indoor environments. The proposal is able to compute the distance among the UAV and the obstacles (which change their position dynamically), and then to select the closest one. When a collision risk is pointed out, the algorithm establish some escape points, whose orientation is aligned tangentially to the obstacle edge or to the UAV normal displacement. Considering that only the desired point is change during the avoidance maneuver, the stability of the whole nonlinear system is demonstrated in the sense of Lyapunov. Information Filter is used to track the 3D positioning of the UAV and the obstacles. Moreover, UAV state variables are given by a Decentralized Information Filter, which fuses information from the Inertial Measurement Unit onboard the aircraft and the depth-camera sensor (RGB-D). The effectiveness of the proposal is demonstrated by simulation results, which take into account the AR.drone rotorcraft dynamic model.