Autonomous Navigation and Localization of a Quadrotor in an Indoor Environment

Abstract

This paper describes an inertial navigation and vanishing point methodology that has been implemented using artificially placed landmarks and the sensors on board a quadrotor for autonomous navigation in a Global-Positioning-System-denied known, indoor environment. The drift in yaw was regulated using a downward-facing camera, and landmarks were placed at strategic locations. The heading was determined by the vanishing point in the image sensed by the forward-facing camera, which also helped to reduce the number of landmarks necessary for autonomous flight. The results presented in this paper suggest that the data from onboard inertial measurement units, combined with the localization method described in this paper, are sufficient to achieve autonomous indoor navigation.