Relative Positioning for Aerial Robot Path Planning in GPS Denied Environment

TL;DR

This paper presents a relative positioning method enabling autonomous UAVs to navigate and coordinate in GPS-denied bushfire environments, enhancing their ability to perform critical monitoring and rescue tasks.

Contribution

It introduces a novel relative positioning approach that allows UAVs to localize themselves in GPS-denied conditions for effective bushfire monitoring.

Findings

Enables UAVs to localize without GPS in challenging environments

Improves coordination of UAV swarms in remote areas

Supports real-time bushfire monitoring operations

Abstract

One of the most useful applications of intelligent aerial robots sometimes called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in Australia is known to be in bushfire monitoring and prediction operations. A swarm of autonomous drones/UAVs programmed to work in real-time observing the fire parameters using their onboard sensors would be valuable in reducing the life-threatening impact of that fire. However autonomous UAVs face serious challenges in their positioning and navigation in critical bushfire conditions such as remoteness and severe weather conditions where GPS signals could also be unreliable. This paper tackles one of the most important factors in autonomous UAV navigation, namely Initial Positioning sometimes called Localisation. The solution provided by this paper will enable a team of autonomous UAVs to establish a relative position to their base of operation to be able to commence a team search and reconnaissance in a bushfire-affected area and find their way back to their base without the help of GPS signals.