The task of establishing and maintaining situational awareness in an unknown environment is a critical step to fulfil in a mission related to the field of rescue robotics. Predominantly, the problem of visual inspection of urban structures is dealt with view-planning being addressed by map-based approaches. In this article, we propose a novel approach towards effective use of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for obtaining a 3-D shape of an unknown structure of objects utilizing a map-independent planning framework. The problem is undertaken via a bifurcated approach to address the task of executing a closer inspection of detected structures with a wider exploration strategy to identify and locate nearby structures, while being equipped with limited sensing capability. The proposed framework is evaluated experimentally in a controlled indoor environment in presence of a mock-up environment validating the efficacy of the proposed inspect-explore policy.

翻译：在未知环境中建立并维持态势感知是救援机器人领域任务中的关键步骤。针对城市结构的视觉检测问题，目前主要采用基于地图的方法进行视点规划。本文提出了一种新颖方法，利用微小型飞行器（MAVs）通过独立于地图的规划框架获取未知物体结构的三维形状。该问题通过双分支方法解决：在配备有限传感能力的条件下，一方面对已检测结构执行近距离检测任务，另一方面采用更广泛的探索策略来识别并定位邻近结构。本文在受控室内环境中利用模拟场景对所提框架进行了实验验证，结果证实了所提出的检测-探索策略的有效性。