A Real-time Framework for UAV Indoor Self-Positioning and 3D Mapping Base on 2D Lidar, Stereo Camera and IMU

This paper proposed a real-time Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) autonomous localization framework based on onboard sensors, including 2D Lidar, Stereo Camera and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), built on the open-source VINS-Fusion software to achieve real-time and drift-free UAV pose estimation. The proposed framework eliminates the motion distortion of Lidar during UAV motion by combining Visual-Inertial Odometry (VIO). It obtains global localization information of Lidar by PL-ICP algorithm based on a global point cloud map. Graph optimization method is used to fuse the local positional estimation and the global information from the Lidar, which eliminate the cumulative error caused by VIO. The feasibility of the method is verified by experiments and compared with the method of only running Visual-Inertial Navigation Systems (VINS), the framework improves the accuracy of localization. In addition, we have implemented the construction of octree maps of 3D environments through the framework of this system.