Path planning with precompiled maps in PIXHAWK

ArduRover
1

Hi everyone,

I want to build an autonomous dust cleaner ground vehicle based on APM:Rover and Pixhawk, intended to be used in a GPS denied environment. For the autonomous navigation, I was thinking in the usage of a precompiled map, because I know beforehand the area in which the robot will work. Is that even possible with Pixhawk? Could you reference to me some previous work on this topic, i,e, the usage of Pixhawk with precompiled maps of some sort as the main way for path planning? In case Pixhawk is not suitable for this application, which autopilot would you recommend for this task?

Thank in advance,

JM

2

Thinking out loud - you have a precompiled map - now what? You still need to know where you are on the map and when you move around on the map. We don’t support precompile maps either at the moment. I’ve not seen any previous work on this. Your best bet for non GPS navigation is either with sonar obstacle avoidance and just throttle up to a slow speed and have the rover drive around randomly avoiding hitting anything or use some kind of sensor grid like these.
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/common-pozyx.html
Note support for these isn’t in Rover yet.

Thanks, Grant.