Three-Dimensional Outdoor Analysis of Single Synthetic Building Structures by an Unmanned Flying Agent Using Monocular Vision

Abstract

An algorithm designed for analysis and understanding a 3D urban-type environment by an autonomous flying agent, equipped only with a monocular vision, is presented. The algorithm is hierarchical and is based on the structural representation of the analyzed scene. Firstly, the robot observes the scene from a high altitude to build a 2D representation of a single object and a graph representation of the 2D scene. The 3D representation of each object arises as a consequence of the robot’s actions, as a result of which it projects the object’s solid on different planes. The robot assigns the obtained representations to the corresponding vertex of the created graph. The algorithm was tested by using the embodied robot operating on the real scene. The tests showed that the robot equipped with the algorithm was able not only to localize the predefined object, but also to perform safe, collision-free maneuvers close to the structures in the scene.