Planning the path to gather the surface information of the target objects is crucial to improve the efficiency of and reduce the overall cost, for visual inspection applications with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Coverage Path Planning (CPP) problem is often formulated for these inspection applications because of the coverage requirement. Traditionally, researchers usually plan and optimize the viewpoints to capture the surface information first, and then optimize the path to visit the selected viewpoints. In this paper, we propose a novel planning method to directly sample and plan the inspection path for a camera-equipped UAV to acquire visual and geometric information of the target structures as a video stream setting in complex 3D environment. The proposed planning method first generates via-points and path primitives around the target object by using sampling methods based on voxel dilation and subtraction. A novel Primitive Coverage Graph (PCG) is then proposed to encode the topological information, flying distances, and visibility information, with the sampled via-points and path primitives. Finally graph search is performed to find the resultant path in the PCG to complete the inspection task with the coverage requirements. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulation and field tests in this paper.
This article addresses the problem of Cooperative Coverage Path Planning (C-CPP) for the inspection of complex infrastructures (offline 3D reconstruction) by utilizing multiple Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs). The proposed scheme, based on a priori 3D model of the infrastructure under inspection, is able to generate multiple paths for UAVs in order to achieve a complete cooperative coverage in a short time. Initially the infrastructure under inspection is being sliced by horizontal planes, which has the capability of recognizing the branches of the structure and these branches will be hand…
A*STAR Institute of Information Research (IR)（新加坡科技研究局信息研究所）；A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC)（新加坡科技研究局高性能计算研究所）；A*STAR Initiative for Artificial Intelligence and Analytics (AI)（新加坡科技研究局人工智能与分析计划）；Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学机械工程系）
We present a multi-UAV Coverage Path Planning (CPP) framework for the inspection of large-scale, complex 3D structures. In the proposed sampling-based coverage path planning method, we formulate the multi-UAV inspection applications as a multi-agent coverage path planning problem. By combining two NP-hard problems: Set Covering Problem (SCP) and Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), a Set-Covering Vehicle Routing Problem (SC-VRP) is formulated and subsequently solved by a modified Biased Random Key Genetic Algorithm (BRKGA) with novel, efficient encoding strategies and local improvement heuristics. W…
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology（上海理工大学）；Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）
The optical scanning gauges mounted on the robots are commonly used in quality inspection, such as verifying the dimensional specification of sheet structures. Coverage path planning (CPP) significantly influences the accuracy and efficiency of robotic quality inspection. Traditional CPP strategies focus on minimizing the number of viewpoints or traveling distance of robots under the condition of full coverage inspection. The measurement uncertainty when collecting the scanning data is less considered in the free-form surface inspection. To address this problem, a novel CPP method with the opt…
Brazilian Institute of Robotics（巴西机器人研究所）；SENAI CIMATEC（巴西国家工业培训服务西玛特克分校）；Department of Informatics, University of Oslo（奥斯陆大学信息学系）；SENAI Institute for Innovation in Automation（巴西国家工业培训服务自动化创新研究所）；Robotics Innovation Center, DFKI GmbH（德国人工智能研究中心机器人创新中心）
An important open problem in robotic planning is the autonomous generation of 3D inspection paths -- that is, planning the best path to move a robot along in order to inspect a target structure. We recently suggested a new method for planning paths allowing the inspection of complex 3D structures, given a triangular mesh model of the structure. The method differs from previous approaches in its emphasis on generating and considering also plans that result in imperfect coverage of the inspection target. In many practical tasks, one would accept imperfections in coverage if this results in a sub…
This report overviews a set of recent contributions in the field of path planning that were developed to enable the realization of the autonomous aerial robotic worker for inspection operations. The specific algorithmic contributions address several fundamental challenges of robotic inspection and exploration, and specifically those of optimal coverage planning given an a priori known model of the structure to be inspected, full coverage, optimized and fast inspection path planning, as well as efficient exploration of completely unknown environments and structures. All of the developed path pl…
Carnegie Mellon University（卡内基梅隆大学）；Mitsubishi Heavy Industries（三菱重工）
In this work we tackle the path planning problem for a 21-dimensional snake robot-like manipulator, navigating a cluttered gas turbine for the purposes of inspection. Heuristic search based approaches are effective planning strategies for common manipulation domains. However, their performance on high dimensional systems is heavily reliant on the effectiveness of the action space and the heuristics chosen. The complex nature of our system, reachability constraints, and highly cluttered turbine environment renders naive choices of action spaces and heuristics ineffective. To this extent we have…
Within this paper, the problem of 3D structural inspection path planning for distributed infrastructure using aerial robots that are subject to time constraints is addressed. The proposed algorithm handles varying spatial properties of the infrastructure facilities, accounts for their different importance and exploration function and computes an overall inspection path of high inspection reward while respecting the robot endurance or mission time constraints as well as the vehicle dynamics and sensor limitations. To achieve its goal, it employs an iterative, 3-step optimization strategy at eac…
University of Rijeka（里耶卡大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）
The application of autonomous UAVs to infrastructure inspection tasks provides benefits in terms of operation time reduction, safety, and cost-effectiveness. This paper presents trajectory planning for three-dimensional autonomous multi-UAV volume coverage and visual inspection of infrastructure based on the Heat Equation Driven Area Coverage (HEDAC) algorithm. The method generates trajectories using a potential field and implements distance fields to prevent collisions and to determine UAVs' camera orientation. It successfully achieves coverage during the visual inspection of complex structur…
REACT: Real-time Entanglement-Aware Coverage Path Planning for Tethered Underwater Vehicles
Artificial Intelligence in Robotics Laboratory (AiR Lab), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aarhus University（人工智能机器人实验室（AiR实验室），电气与计算机工程系，阿arhus大学）；NestAI；EIVA a/s（EIVA公司）；Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心（DFKI））；Automatic Control Group, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Paderborn University（自动控制组，电气工程与信息科技系，帕德博恩大学）
This article presents a novel framework for performing visual inspection around 3D infrastructures, by establishing a team of fully autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) with robust localization, planning and perception capabilities. The proposed aerial inspection system reaches high level of autonomy on a large scale, while pushing to the boundaries the real life deployment of aerial robotics. In the presented approach, the MAVs deployed for the inspection of the structure rely only on their onboard computer and sensory systems. The developed framework envisions a modular system, combining …
Vietnam National University（越南国立大学）；University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）
In built infrastructure monitoring, an efficient path planning algorithm is essential for robotic inspection of large surfaces using computer vision. In this work, we first formulate the inspection path planning problem as an extended travelling salesman problem (TSP) in which both the coverage and obstacle avoidance were taken into account. An enhanced discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) algorithm is then proposed to solve the TSP, with performance improvement by using deterministic initialization, random mutation, and edge exchange. Finally, we take advantage of parallel computing to…
Ergodic Trajectory Optimization on Generalized Domains Using Maximum Mean Discrepancy
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yale University（耶鲁大学机械工程系）；School of Computer Science, The University of Sydney（悉尼大学计算机科学学院）；School of Mathematics, The University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学数学学院）；NVIDIA
UAS-based Automated Structural Inspection Path Planning via Visual Data Analytics and Optimization
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校）；Zhejiang University - University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Institute（浙江大学伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳香槟校区联合学院）
Solar-powered aircraft promise significantly increased flight endurance over conventional aircraft. While this makes them promising candidates for large-scale aerial inspection missions, their structural fragility necessitates that adverse weather is avoided using appropriate path planning methods. This paper therefore presents MetPASS, the Meteorology-aware Path Planning and Analysis Software for Solar-powered UAVs. MetPASS is the first path planning framework in the literature that considers all aspects that influence the safety or performance of solar-powered flight: It avoids environmental…
Preference-Driven Active 3D Scene Representation for Robotic Inspection in Nuclear Decommissioning
School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学计算科学学院）；University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学詹姆斯·瓦特工程学院）
Dual-arm Cooperation for Tabletop Wiping with Temporal Object Removal
School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学自动化科学与电气工程学院）；Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI)（北京通用人工智能研究院）；Delta Intelligence（Delta智能）；State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Peking University（北京大学智能科学与技术学院通用人工智能国家重点实验室）
University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学应用物理实验室）
Many robots move through the world by composing locomotion primitives like steps and turns. To do so well, robots need not have primitives that make intuitive sense to humans. This becomes of paramount importance when robots are damaged and no longer move as designed. Here we propose a goal function we call "coverage", that represents the usefulness of a library of locomotion primitives in a manner agnostic to the particulars of the primitives themselves. We demonstrate the ability to optimize coverage on both simulated and physical robots, and show that coverage can be rapidly recovered after…
Delft University of Technology（代尔夫特理工大学）；ETH Zurich（苏黎世联邦理工学院）
This paper presents an online informative path planning approach for active information gathering on three-dimensional surfaces using aerial robots. Most existing works on surface inspection focus on planning a path offline that can provide full coverage of the surface, which inherently assumes the surface information is uniformly distributed hence ignoring potential spatial correlations of the information field. In this paper, we utilize manifold Gaussian processes (mGPs) with geodesic kernel functions for mapping surface information fields and plan informative paths online in a receding hori…
Coverage Path Planning: Classical Foundations, Recent Advances, and Future Directions
College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University（暨南大学信息科学技术学院）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Connecticut（康涅狄格大学电气与计算机工程系）；Global College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学密西根学院）；School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学人工智能学院）；School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Wuyi University（五邑大学电子与信息工程学院）；School of Computer Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology（华南理工大学计算机科学与工程学院）
Hainan University（海南大学）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Tianjin University（天津大学）
The agricultural irrigation system is closely related to agricultural production. There are some problems in nowadays agricultural irrigation system, such as poor mobility, imprecision and high price. To address these issues, an intelligent irrigation robot is designed and implemented in this work. The robot achieves precise irrigation by the irrigation path planning algorithm which is improved by Bayesian theory. In the proposed algorithm, we utilize as much information as possible to achieve full coverage irrigation in the complex agricultural environment. Besides, we propose the maximum ris…
Adaptive path planning for efficient object search by UAVs in agricultural fields
Agricultural Biosystems Engineering, Department of Plant Sciences, Wageningen University and Research（农业生物系统工程系，植物科学系，瓦赫宁根大学与研究中心）；Laboratory of Geo-information Science and Remote Sensing, Department of Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University and Research（地理信息科学与遥感实验室，环境科学系，瓦赫宁根大学与研究中心）
Mapping-Guided Task Discovery and Allocation for Robotic Inspection of Underwater Structures
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington（机械工程系，华盛顿大学）；Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering and Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington（工业与系统工程系和机械工程系，华盛顿大学）
The multi-robot coverage problem is an essential building block for systems that perform tasks like inspection or search and rescue. We discretize the coverage problem to induce a spatial graph of locations and represent robots as nodes in the graph. Then, we train a Graph Neural Network controller that leverages the spatial equivariance of the task to imitate an expert open-loop routing solution. This approach generalizes well to much larger maps and larger teams that are intractable for the expert. In particular, the model generalizes effectively to a simulation of ten quadrotors and dozens …
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences（库朗数学科学研究所）；Tandon School of Engineering（坦登工程学院）；New York University（纽约大学）
Autonomous drone swarms are a burgeoning technology with significant applications in the field of mapping, inspection, transportation and monitoring. To complete a task, each drone has to accomplish a sub-goal within the context of the overall task at hand and navigate through the environment by avoiding collision with obstacles and with other agents in the environment. In this work, we choose the task of optimal coverage of an environment with drone swarms where the global knowledge of the goal states and its positions are known but not of the obstacles. The drones have to choose the Points o…
Czech Technical University（捷克理工大学）；Faculty of Electrical Engineering（电气工程学院）
This paper concerns fault-tolerant power transmission line inspection planning as a generalization of the multiple traveling salesmen problem. The addressed inspection planning problem is formulated as a single-depot multiple-vehicle scenario, where the inspection vehicles are constrained by the battery budget limiting their inspection time. The inspection vehicle is assumed to be an autonomous multi-copter with a wide range of possible flight speeds influencing battery consumption. The inspection plan is represented by multiple routes for vehicles providing full coverage over inspection targe…
This letter concerns optimal power transmission line inspection formulated as a proposed generalization of the traveling salesman problem for a multi-route one-depot scenario. The problem is formulated for an inspection vehicle with a limited travel budget. Therefore, the solution can be composed of multiple runs to provide full coverage of the given power lines. Besides, the solution indicates how many vehicles can perform the inspection in a single run. The optimal solution of the problem is solved by the proposed Integer Linear Programming (ILP) formulation, which is, however, very computat…
University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Sony AI（索尼人工智能研究院）
Many municipalities and large organizations have fleets of vehicles that need to be coordinated for tasks such as garbage collection or infrastructure inspection. Motivated by this need, this paper focuses on the common subproblem in which a team of vehicles needs to plan coordinated routes to patrol an area over iterations while minimizing temporally and spatially dependent costs. In particular, at a specific location (e.g., a vertex on a graph), we assume the cost grows linearly in expectation with an unknown rate, and the cost is reset to zero whenever any vehicle visits the vertex (represe…
