FUEL is a hierarchical framework for Fast UAV ExpLoration.
It contains a Frontier Information Structure (FIS), which can be incrementally updated with the online built map and facilitate exploration planning in high frequency.
Based on FIS, a hierarchical planner plans optimal global coverage paths, refine local viewpoints, and generates minimum-time local trajectories successively.
Our method is demonstrated to complete challenging exploration tasks 3-8 times faster than state-of-the-art approaches.
Authors: Boyu Zhou and Shaojie Shen from the HUKST Aerial Robotics Group.
Complete videos: video1.
The associated paper is submitted to RA-L with ICRA 2021 option. Preprint is available.
The code will be made public after publication.