Autonomous Exploration and Data Gathering with a Drone

Abstract: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are agile and are able to fly in and out of areas that are either dangerous for humans or have complex terrains making ground robots unsuitable. For their autonomous operation, the ability to explore unmapped areas is imperative. This has applications in data gathering tasks, search and rescue etc.  The objective of this thesis is to ascertain that it is, in fact, possible and feasible to use UAVs equipped with 2D laser scanners to perform autonomous exploration tasks in indoor environments. The system is evaluated by testing it in different simulated and real environments. The results presented show that the system is capable of completely and safely exploring unmapped and/or unexplored regions.