用粗糙地图加速无人机在大环境中的探索,减少绕路。
Explore From Sketch: Accelerating UAV Exploration in Large-scale Environments with Prior Maps

- 用2D地图与激光雷达点云配准,解决地图不准确问题。
- 探索效率提升34.2%,飞行距离减少37.9%。
- 适合有建筑图但环境复杂的无人机探索场景。
大型拓扑复杂环境中,无人机自主探索常因调度低效和绕路导致效率低下。尽管施工图纸等先验地图通常不精确且存在偏差,但在多数场景中易获取,具备提供全局结构引导的潜力。本文提出一种新探索框架,利用稀疏、未对齐甚至有差异的2D先验地图辅助基于激光雷达的无人机探索。首先,设计鲁棒的2D-3D点云配准流程:结合GeoContext描述子进行单帧候选检索,多帧验证机制实现粗略变换估计并剔除异常值,再通过Scale-ICP算法精化。该模块可处理地图偏差,在几何模糊时输出多个假设。为有效利用配准结果进行规划,进一步提出层级视点规划策略,考虑定位不确定性:先将局部视角关联至先验引导点,采用蒙特卡洛树搜索求解各假设下的最优遍历序列;为降低配准不确定性,引入风险感知选择器,基于置信度加权旅行风险评估,最终构建固定终点的旅行商问题以生成高效局部覆盖路径。基准测试显示,探索效率最高提升34.2%,飞行距离减少37.9%;大量仿真与实地实验验证了对先验地图不完整性和形变的鲁棒性。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Autonomous exploration with UAVs in large-scale, topologically complex environments often suffers from low efficiency due to suboptimal scheduling and detours. Prior maps (e.g., construction drawings), although usually imprecise and flawed, are readily available in many scenarios and have the potential to provide global structural guidance. This paper presents a novel exploration framework that leverages sparse, unaligned, and even discrepant 2D prior maps for LiDAR-based UAV exploration. First, a robust 2D-3D point cloud registration pipeline is proposed to align LiDAR observations with prior maps. The registration pipeline combines a GeoContext descriptor for single-frame candidate retrieval, a multi-frame verification mechanism for coarse transformation estimation with outlier rejection, and a Scale-ICP algorithm for refinement. The registration module can handle map discrepancies and provide multiple hypotheses when geometric ambiguities arise. To effectively utilize the registration results for exploration planning, we further develop a hierarchical viewpoint planning strategy under localization uncertainties. The hierarchical strategy first spatially attaches local viewpoints to prior guidepoints and adopts a Monte Carlo Tree Search solver to determine their traversal sequence under each registration hypothesis. To mitigate registration uncertainty, a risk-aware selector evaluates prior sequences using confidence-weighted travel risk, and a fixed-endpoint traveling salesman problem is formulated to generate an efficient local coverage path under the selected prior guidance. Benchmark evaluations reveal up to 34.2% improvement in exploration efficiency and 37.9% reduction in flight distance compared to state-of-the-art methods, while extensive simulations and field experiments further demonstrate robustness to prior map incompleteness and deformations.
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