This letter presents a self-contained system for robust deployment of autonomous aerial vehicles in environments without access to global navigation systems and with limited lighting conditions. The proposed system, application-tailored for documentation in dark areas of large historical monuments, uses a unique and reliable aerial platform with a multi-modal lightweight sensory setup to acquire data in human-restricted areas with adverse lighting conditions, especially in areas that are high above the ground. The introduced localization method relies on an easy-to-obtain 3-D point cloud of a historical building, while it copes with a lack of visible light by fusing active laser-based sensors. The approach does not rely on any external localization, or on a preset motion-capture system. This enables fast deployment in the interiors of investigated structures while being computationally undemanding enough to process data online, onboard an MAV equipped with ordinary processing resources. The reliability of the system is analyzed, is quantitatively evaluated on a set of aerial trajectories performed inside a real-world church, and is deployed onto the aerial platform in the position control feedback loop to demonstrate the reliability of the system in the safety-critical application of historical monuments documentation.

翻译：本文提出了一套自主完备系统，用于在无全球导航系统接入且光照受限环境中实现自主飞行器的稳健部署。该专用系统针对大型历史古迹暗区文档化需求，采用独特可靠的飞行平台与多模态轻量传感配置，能够在人类难以进入且光照恶劣的区域（尤其高空区域）采集数据。所提出的定位方法依托历史建筑易获取的三维点云，通过融合主动激光传感器弥补可见光不足。该方法不依赖任何外部定位或预设运动捕捉系统，可在被勘探结构内部快速部署，并且计算需求极低，足以在配备常规处理资源的微型飞行器上实现机载实时数据处理。通过真实教堂场景中的一组空中轨迹对系统可靠性进行定量评估，并在位置控制反馈回路中部署至飞行平台，从而验证该系统在历史古迹文档这一安全关键应用中的可靠性。