Datasets accompanying the ICRA 2015 Paper: A. Bircher, K. Alexis, M. Burri, P. Oettershagen, S. Omari, T. Mantel and R. Siegwart, “Structural Inspection Path Planning via Iterative Viewpoint Resampling with Application to Aerial Robotics”
The following datasets are available:
- Fixed-Wing UAV:
- Rotorcraft UAV:
You may find all the datasets following this Link.
All datasets contain dense point clouds derived using the proposed autonomous inspection planner for the flight path, a camera system and the Pix4D software for post-processing of the pose-annotated images. The point clouds are saved in *.ply format and you may load them with any relevant software (e.g. MeshLab). Furthermore, for the case of the Marche-en-Famenne inspection using the AtlantikSolar UAV equipped with the Sony HDR-AS100VW camera orthophoto data along with Google Earth KML files are provided.
The employed UAVs:
- AtlantikSolar, a solar-powered long-endurance aerial vehicle designed by our lab and equipped with a monocoluar version of the VI-Sensor. Find more info here.
- Firefly, a hexacopter vehicle from Ascending Technologies and equipeed with advanced functionalities by our lab along with a VI-Sensor module. Find more info here.
The Camera systems used:
- The Visual Inertial Sensor (VI-Sensor) developed by ASL and Skybotix that provides tightly aligned Visual frames with IMU information. Find more info here.
- A modified version of the VI-Sensor onboard AtlantikSolar
- A Sony HDR-AS100VW GPS-tagged action cam
Example images:
- Below you find example images from the monocular version of the VI-Sensor on-board AtlantikSolar, o f the Sony HDR-AS100VW on-board the same UAV and of the VI-Sensor on-board Firefly.
How to load the Point-clouds:
Loading the point-clouds provided here is a meaningful way to assess the quality of the inspection data. Indeed there exist multiple software solutions that allow processing point-clouds. Among them, Meshlab is a free-of-charge software available for all major operating systems. Download this software and use the File>Import Mesh functionality to load the point-clouds provided here in ASCII-formatted *.PLY form. Below indicative images from the point-clouds.
How to load the Google-tiles:
For the case of the fixed-wing UAV inspection using the Sony HDR-AS100VW nadir-looking camera, google tiles are provided that can be loaded using Google Earth. Run the software and then use the File>Open functionality to load the “Marche_en_Famenne_AtlantikSolar_SonyHDRAS100VW_Google.kml” file. Note that close to the edges, accuracy is lost due to lack of information. Below an example with the google tiles loaded and an inspection path plotted on-top.
