Title: Fast Autonomous Flight in Warehouses for Inventory Applications,
Abstract: The past years have shown a remarkable growth in use-cases for micro aerial
vehicles (MAVs). Conceivable indoor applications require highly robust
environment perception, fast reaction to changing situations, and stable
navigation, but reliable sources of absolute positioning like GNSS or compass
measurements are unavailable during indoor flights. We present a
high-performance autonomous inventory MAV for operation inside warehouses. The
MAV navigates along warehouse aisles and detects the placed stock in the
shelves alongside its path with a multimodal sensor setup containing an RFID
reader and two high-resolution cameras. We describe in detail the SLAM pipeline
based on a 3D lidar, the setup for stock recognition, the mission planning and
trajectory generation, as well as a low-level routine for avoidance of
dynamical or previously unobserved obstacles. Experiments were performed in an
operative warehouse of a logistics provider, in which an external warehouse
management system provided the MAV with high-level inspection missions that are
executed fully autonomously.