Experimental Evaluation of a Geometry-Aware Aerial Visual Inspection Framework in a Constrained Environment

This article aims to present an experimental evaluation of an offline, geometry-aware aerial visual inspection framework, specifically in constrained environment, established for geometrically fractured objects, by employing an autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), equipped with on-board sensors. Based on a model-centric approach, the proposed inspection framework, generates inspection viewpoints around the geometrically fractured object, subject to the augmented static bounds to prevent collisions. The novel framework of visual inspection, presented in this article, aims to mitigate challenges arising due to the spatially-constrained environment, such as limited configuration space and collision with the object under inspection, by accounting for the geometrical information of the vehicle to be inspected. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is experimentally evaluated through large scale field trials with a mining machine.