Aerial-Ground collaborative sensing: Third-Person view for teleoperation
This addresses the need for improved teleoperation performance in time-critical applications like Search and Rescue, though it appears incremental as it builds on local visual servoing with added features.
The paper tackles the problem of inefficient first-person view teleoperation for ground robots in difficult terrains by proposing a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV)-based system that autonomously provides a third-person perspective, enabling support for multiple ground robots in GPS-denied environments.
Rapid deployment and operation are key requirements in time critical application, such as Search and Rescue (SaR). Efficiently teleoperated ground robots can support first-responders in such situations. However, first-person view teleoperation is sub-optimal in difficult terrains, while a third-person perspective can drastically increase teleoperation performance. Here, we propose a Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV)-based system that can autonomously provide third-person perspective to ground robots. While our approach is based on local visual servoing, it further leverages the global localization of several ground robots to seamlessly transfer between these ground robots in GPS-denied environments. Therewith one MAV can support multiple ground robots on a demand basis. Furthermore, our system enables different visual detection regimes, and enhanced operability, and return-home functionality. We evaluate our system in real-world SaR scenarios.