Micro Air Vehicle Scouts for Inventory Management and Situational Awareness

Abstract

Reliable and efficient acquisition of data from physical spaces will have countless applications in industry, policy and defense. The capability of gaining information at different scales makes Micro-Aerial Vehicles(MAVs) excellent for aforementioned applications. However, reasoning about information gathering at multiple resolution is NP-Hard and the state of the art methods are too slow to present an approximate solution online. Moreover, a robust data gathering system needs to be lightweight/portable, independent of GPS or communications availability while being safe, and cognizant of its sensory and battery limitations. Through Department of Defense grants for developing Adaptive Introspection and Deployment for Robust Long Duration Autonomy and Micro Air Vehicle Scouts for Intelligent Semantic Mapping we have developed a set algorithms and an autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle that can gather data while safely operating in unstructured environments using vision only sensors. Such a system has the potential to create value for military and commercial applications specifically for reconnaissance and inventory/yard management. Through this grant, we will explore the exact market for such a system and bring onboard the stakeholders, customers for commercialization of the technology developed.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Feb 14, 2019
Source ID
W911NF1810121

Entities

People

  • Sebastian Scherer

Organizations

  • Army Contracting Command
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Office of the Secretary of Defense

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Aerial Unmanned Vehicle Swarm Micro Periodontal Dentistry.
  • Economics
  • Geospatial Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence Analytics

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers