Air Bumper: A Collision Detection and Reaction Framework for Autonomous MAV Navigation

TL;DR

Air Bumper is a novel collision detection and reaction framework for autonomous MAVs that uses onboard IMU data to improve safety and enable rapid collision recovery in 3D environments.

Contribution

It introduces a collision detection and reaction system utilizing only IMU data, along with collision recovery control and collision-aware mapping for MAV navigation.

Findings

Quadrotors can detect and recover from collisions rapidly.

The framework enables continuous flight after collisions.

Simulation and experiments validate effectiveness.

Abstract

Autonomous navigation in unknown environments with obstacles remains challenging for micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) due to their limited onboard computing and sensing resources. Although various collision avoidance methods have been developed, it is still possible for drones to collide with unobserved obstacles due to unpredictable disturbances, sensor limitations, and control uncertainty. Instead of completely avoiding collisions, this article proposes Air Bumper, a collision detection and reaction framework, for fully autonomous flight in 3D environments to improve the safety of drones. Our framework only utilizes the onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU) to detect and estimate collisions. We further design a collision recovery control for rapid recovery and collision-aware mapping to integrate collision information into general LiDAR-based sensing and planning frameworks. Our simulation and experimental results show that the quadrotor can rapidly detect, estimate, and recover from collisions with obstacles in 3D space and continue the flight smoothly with the help of the collision-aware map. Our Air Bumper will be released as open-source software on GitHub.