Arctic Test Flights of the CMU Autonomous Helicopter
This paper presents our experiences during the test flights of the CMU autonomous helicopter in the Canadian Arctic, the first deployment of this technology for a real-world application. The mission required building dense topological maps of Devon Island's Haughton crater for NASA scientists s...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
1999
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.25.6649 http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kay/classes/robotics/papers/helicopter.pdf |
| Summary: | This paper presents our experiences during the test flights of the CMU autonomous helicopter in the Canadian Arctic, the first deployment of this technology for a real-world application. The mission required building dense topological maps of Devon Island's Haughton crater for NASA scientists studying Mars-analog environments. The paper presents our system design and preparation, flight test results, and example maps produced by the onboard laser-based mapping system during the mission. 1. Introduction At Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, we have been developing a number of research autonomous helicopters since 1991. (See Appendix A for project history) Over the years, critical components have matured enough to form a framework for several autonomous systems in service as testbeds for aerial robotics research. In the summer of 1998, we took a step beyond research alone and deployed an autonomous helicopter in the Canadian Arctic to build high-accuracy topological maps for NASA. |
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