Arctic Test Flights of the CMU Autonomous Helicopter

• Main Authors: Ryan Miller Omead, Ryan Miller, Omead Amidi, Mark Delouis
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1999
• Subjects: Arctic
• 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

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.