Specifying Complex Missions for Aerial Robotics in Dynamic Environments

Abstract

To specify missions in aerial robotics, many existing applications follow an approach based on a list of waypoints, which has been proven to be useful and practical in professional domains (agriculture of precision, creation of terrain maps, etc.). However this approach has limitations to be used in other problems such as the one defined in the IMAV 2016 competition (e.g., a search and rescue mission). In this paper we describe a language to specify missions for aerial robotics that tries to overcome such limitations. This language has been designed as part of a complete software framework and architecture for aerial robotics called Aerostack. The paper describes the result of experimental evaluation in real flight and its adequacy for the IMAV 2016 competition.