Assisted teleoperation of quadcopters using obstacle avoidance

Teleoperation of unmanned aerial vehicles often demands extensive training. Yet, even well trained pilots are prone to mistakes, resulting frequently in collisions of the vehicle with obstacles. This paper presents a method to assist the tele-operation of a quadrotor using an obstacle avoidance approach. In particular, rough map of the nearby environment is constructed using sonar sensors. This map is constructed using FastSLAM to allow tracking of the vehicle position with respect to the map. The map is then used to override operator commands that may lead to a collision. An unknown and GPS denied environment is considered. Experimental results using the USARsim simulator are presented.