ROPE-NICE (Reconfigurable Optical Payload for Enhanced Navigaiton in Cluttered Environments)

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes a novel Reconfigurable Optical Payload for Enhanced Navigation In Cluttered Environments (ROPE-NICE) for UAVs between 1 and 55 lbs to navigate in GPS denied environments; at altitude (downward staring), low level urban, or indoor cluttered. In its leanest configuration (150g), the core payload includes one downward E/O camera, one forward E/O camera, an IMU, Cortex M4 and 2x i.MX6 Quad A9 processors. Forward camera(s) can be (re)configured in monocular, multi-monocular, stereoscopic, or split-monocular with options for resolution/weight in E/O and LWIR spectrums. Visible or IR LEDs enable night operation without LWIR cameras or a mixed E/O-LWIR configuration provides increased robustness. ROPE-NICE is built on three algorithmic tiers; 1) Robust low-level velocity control with a split-mode odometer switching between phase correlation and pyramidal Lucas-Kanade feature tracking. 2) Mid-level object detection and avoidance with optical flow and velocity estimation. 3) High-level Simultaneous Localization and Mapping via a graph of local maps. ROPE-NICE will be developed by maturing PSIs ultra-low SWaP SLAM payload to the ROPE-NICE architecture, validating hardware in the loop on data sets, and testing with PSIs InstantEye quadrotor UAV.