Towards Autonomy of Micro Aerial Vehicles in Unknown and GPS-denied Environments

In this article, we present a comprehensive design and implementation for a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) that is able to perform 3-D autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance in cluttered and realistic unknown environments without the aid of global positioning system and other external sensors or markers. To achieve these autonomous missions, modularized components are developed for the MAV, including visual–inertial odometry, 3-D occupancy mapping, and motion planning. The proposed system is implemented to run on a small embedded computer in real time. It is demonstrated to be robust in both simulation and real flight experiments. The demonstration video is available at: https://youtu.be/KUKzsnORm-4 .