MICRO AND MACRO QUADCOPTER DRONES FOR INDOOR MAPPING TO SUPPORT DISASTER MANAGEMENT

Abstract. The use of drones to explore indoor spaces has gained attention and popularity for disaster management navigation applications. In this paper we present the operations mapping techniques two that are different in terms size, sensors deployed, positioning used. first drone is a low-cost commercial quadcopter microdrone, Crazyflie, while second relatively expensive research macrodrone, called MAX. We investigated their feasibility areas where satellite not available, such as spaces. compared point clouds obtained by multi-ranger deck, multi-layer LIDAR scanner stereo camera, assessed each against ground truth with terrestrial laser scanner. Results showed both capable cluttered environments can provide sufficient quick exploration. Furthermore, scanner-based system handle large office environment an accumulated drift less than 0.02% (1 cm) on Z-axis 0.77% (50 X Y axes over length trajectory about 65 m. Despite limited features sensor configuration its performance promising spaces, given low deviation from truth: cloud-to-cloud distances measured were generally 20 cm.