Towards autonomous mine inspection

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) for autonomous inspection and 3D reconstruction of underground mines. The goal is to manually fly an MAV equipped with cameras and a laser range sensor into a vertical shaft to collect data. This data can be used to evaluate the performance of the localization system as well as post processed to reconstruct a 3D model of the shaft. Due to its novelty of flying an MAV in a deep mine, we report gained experience of the effect of the hot, wet and dusty environment on the system as well as the influence of turbulences from vertical winds on the flight performance. Further we evaluated the quality of the recorded data and there applicability for a fully autonomous mine inspection system.