AutoCUP: A Platform for Automatically Creating Aerial Panoramic Map with Multi-UAVs (poster)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) provides an effective way to create an Aerial Panoramic Map (APM). Generally, it consists of three steps: 1) select a set of locations from a map, 2) take photos from different angles at each selected location one by one, and 3) make panoramic images by the Panoramic Mosaic technology, and then create an APM with these images. However, it is always labor-intensive and time-consuming to complete these steps in a large region such as a campus and a park, due to multiple reasons: 1) inexperience for location selection, 2) low-efficiency for manually operating UAV to fly among different locations one by one and make photos from different angles, and 3) limited energy supply and low-efficiency for a single UAV. DJI GO[1] has been developed to simplify a part of operations in steps 2) and 3), by which we only need one button to take photos automatically from different angles at a selected location. However, it is still required to manually select locations and control UAV to fly among different locations. Moreover, the defects of using a single UAV still exist. By contrast, we aim to design an Auto nomously C ooperative U AV system platform for P anoramic map generation, AutoCUP, which leverages multiple UAVs to full-automatically and high-efficiently complete all steps of creating an APM.