Collision Free Navigation of a Flying Robot for Underground Mine Search and Mapping

In this paper, we propose a method of using an autonomous flying robot to explore an underground tunnel environment and build a 3D map. The measurements and sensors we considered in the presented method are simple and valid in practical UAV engineering. The proposed safe exploration algorithm belongs to a class of probabilistic area search and with a mathematical proof, the performance of the algorithm is analysed. Furthermore, the simulations show that the algorithm can be implemented in sloping tunnels.