Assisted Localization of MAVs for Navigation in Indoor Environments Using Fiducial Markers

Micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) are often limited due to weight or cost constraints. This results in low sensor variety and sometimes even in low sensor quality. For example, many MAVs only offer a single RGB camera to capture the environment, apart from simple distance sensors. On the other side, maps of complex environments are typically captured using depth sensors like Lidar, which are not found on such drones. For MAVs to still benefit from and use these maps, it is necessary to implement a connection layer that enables the localization of the MAV in these maps. In this paper, we propose to use fiducial markers that can be recorded by an assisting device, e.g., a mobile phone or tablet, responsible for map creation. These fiducial markers have a known pose in the map and can be detected by a drone's RGB camera to localize itself. We show that the markers are localized in the map creation process with high precision and that the drone is able to determine its pose based on detected markers. Furthermore, we present a ROS 2 based drone controller for a Ryze Tello EDU MAV that uses an occupancy voxel map for navigation.