Nonholomic-like Corridor Navigation of a Quad-rotor MAV using Optical Flow

The paper presents initial results towards a reactive vision-based autonomous navigation within an indoor corridor performed by a quad-rotor miniature air vehicle (MAV). A model separation is proposed to simplify the control of the six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) dynamics of the flying robot. Such approach allows to deal with quad-rotor's 3D-motion through two subsystems: dynamic (altitude and MAV-relative forward velocity) and kinematic (nonholonomic navigation) subsystems. In terms of control, a hierarchical control scheme is used to stabilize dynamic and kinematic underactuaded subsystem involved in the navigation task. A Lyapunov-based bounded controller is used to stabilize the angular error dynamics. Furthermore, the corresponding stability analysis is presented to guarantee the asymptotical convergence of angular states to the origin. Promising simulations results shows the validity of the proposed control strategy since experimental values obtained from semi-automatic flight of quadrotor while navigating through an indoor corridor were used in such numerical evaluation.