Visual–Inertial Autonomous UAV Navigation in Complex Illumination and Highly Cluttered Under-Canopy Environments
Leyang Zhao, Weixi Wang, Qizhi He, Li Yan, Xiaoming Li
Abstract
The under-canopy environment, which is inherently inaccessible to humans, necessitates the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for data collection. The implementation of UAV autonomous navigation in such environments faces challenges, including dense obstacles, GNSS signal interference, and varying lighting conditions. This paper introduces a UAV autonomous navigation method specifically designed for under-canopy environments. Initially, image enhancement techniques are integrated with neural network-based visual feature extraction. Subsequently, employs a high-dimensional error-state optimizer coupled with a low-dimensional height filter to achieve high-precision localization of the UAV in under-canopy environments. Furthermore, proposes a boundary sampling autonomous exploration algorithm and an advanced Rapidly exploring Random Tree (RRT) path planning algorithm. The objective is to enhance the reliability and safety of UAV operations beneath the forest canopy, thereby establishing a technical foundation for surveying vertically stratified natural resources.