Warehouse Small Cargo-carrying UAV Design and Environmental T265 Camera Placement Angle Study

DOI: https://doi.org/10.62517/jes.202302410

Author(s)

Ang He1, Xiangda Wang2, Xinyu Song1, Hongwei Huang1,*, Peng Liu3

Affiliation(s)

1College of Information Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China 2School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China 3College of Transport & Communications, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China *Corresponding Author.

Abstract

The Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265 is a tracking camera that uses its own Vi-Slam algorithm to output horizontal and vertical coordinates, which has a wide range of applications in drones, unmanned boats, and unmanned vehicles. In this paper, we utilize the T265 and the Pixhawk4 (PX4) flight controller to build a Robotics Operating System (ROS)-based, fixed-point cruise-capable, self-taking-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for cargo loading. The T265 is a fisheye black and white camera with powerful visual simultaneous localization and mapping (Slam) localization and a large visual range. The T265 features the Movidius Myriad 2 visual processing unit. Slam construction based on the comparison of feature points to output coordinates. Nevertheless, when the environment has a single color and insufficient feature contrast, it is easy to cause a SLAM error, leading to drifting of the drone's coordinates, which is very dangerous. It is easy to injure drone operators and other pedestrians accidentally, and at the same time, it is often accompanied by drone crashes that cause economic losses. We experimented with placing the T265 camera at multiple angles to test the best placement angle for more accurate drone positioning. The article also describes the mechanical mechanism design, hardware and software design of the cargo UAV, the optimal placement angle was verified in the environment described in the paper.

Keywords

T265; Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV); Visual SLAM; Robot Operating System (ROS)

References

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