惑星探査ドローン向けテザー慣性位置推定
Tether-Inertial Localization for Planetary Drones
惑星探査用UAVの位置推定を、テザー（ケーブル）の長さと角度の計測と慣性センサを組み合わせて行う新しい手法を提案。ケーブルのたるみをモデル化し、ガウス過程で誤差を補正することで、高精度な位置推定を実現した。
詳しい要約
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2. 先行研究と比べてどこがすごい？
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著者: Dielof van Loon, Anton Bredenbeck, Lennart Puck, Martin Azkarate, Salua Hamaza
分類: cs.RO
原文アブストラクト
Recent developments in planetary exploration have shown the potential of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), such as the Ingenuity helicopter that provided valuable mapping data. However, limited payload capabilities constrain the flight times and compute available for localization, which restrict their applicability. By providing a tethered connection, issues such as battery and computational constraints are offloaded to the base rover. At the same time, the cable can be exploited for non-drifting localization. This work presents a novel Tether-Inertial Localization approach that uses tether length and angle measurements to estimate the UAV position relative to its base. The method combines a computationally efficient analytical catenary model with a Gaussian Process (GP) residual error compensation. This accounts for systematic sensor inaccuracies and model limitations. Experimental validation across circular, triangular, and figure-eight trajectories with tether lengths up to 4.5 m and a total flight time of 37 minutes demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Using only tether-based position estimates for feedback, the analytical catenary model achieves an average RMSE of 7.4 cm, which is further reduced to 5.2 cm through GP-based residual compensation, one order of magnitude better than the state-of-the-art. These results establish Tether-Inertial Localization as a practical alternative to vision- and GNSS-based localization for Tethered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (TUAVs).
