High-Accuracy Robust SLAM and Real-Time Autonomous Navigation of UAV in GNSS-denied Environments

One of the most challenging tasks of UAV is to quickly and safely autonomous navigation and reconstruction in unknown and GNSS-denied environments. In this paper, we present a feasible design and development of a UAV system that is capable of autonomous navigation and rapid reconstruction in GNSS-denied environments. A multiple sensor information fusion based SLAM method is proposed to achieve UAV’s localization and reconstruction without GNSS reception, and a local path planner is then proposed based on A* and 3DVFH+ that iteratively searches for the optimal local path. Each subsystem is separately tested for their effectiveness, and comprehensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the presented system in GNSS-denied complex environments.