Autonomous MAV Flight in Indoor Environments using Single Image Perspective Cues

We consider the problem of autonomously flying Miniature Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) in indoor environments such as home and office buildings. The primary long range sensor in these MAVs is a miniature camera. While previous approaches first try to build a 3D model in order to do planning and control, our method neither attempts to build nor requires a 3D model. Instead, our method first classifies the type of indoor environment the MAV is in, and then uses vision algorithms based on perspective cues to estimate the desired direction to fly. We test our method on two MAV platforms: a co-axial miniature helicopter and a toy quadrotor. Our experiments show that our vision algorithms are quite reliable, and they enable our MAVs to fly in a variety of corridors and staircases.