Skip to main content
Log in

Aerial service vehicles for industrial inspection: task decomposition and plan execution

  • Published:
Applied Intelligence Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This work proposes a high-level control system designed for an Aerial Service Vehicle capable of performing complex tasks in close and physical interaction with the environment in an autonomous manner. We designed a hybrid control architecture which integrates task, path, motion planning/replanning, and execution monitoring. The high-level system relies on a continuous monitoring and planning cycle to suitably react to events, user interventions, and failures, communicating with the low level control layers. The system has been assessed on real-world and simulated scenarios representing an industrial environment.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Ai-Chang M, Bresina J, Charest L, Chase A, Cheng-jung Hsu J, Jonsson A, Kanefsky B, Morris P, Rajan K, Yglesias , Chafin BG, Dias WB, Maldague PF (2004) MAPGEN: mixed-initiative planning and scheduling for the mars exploration rover mission. IEEE Intell Syst 19(1): 8–12

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. EU Collaborative Project ICT-248669, “AIRobots”. www.airobots.eu

  3. Allen J, Ferguson G (2002) Human-machine collaborative planning. In: NASA workshop on planning and scheduling for space

  4. Antonelli G, Marino A (2010) Smooth 3-dimensional path generation with guaranteed maximum distance from viapoints. In: 7th IFAC symposium on intelligent autonomous vehicles. pp 1–6

  5. Blöesch M, Weiss S, Scaramuzza D, Siegwart R (2010) Vision based MAV navigation in unknown and unstructured environments. In: ICRA, vol 2010. 21–28

  6. Carbone A, Finzi A, Orlandini A, Pirri F (2008) Model-based control architecture for attentive robots in rescue scenarios. Auton Robot 24(1): 87–120

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Erol K, Hendler J, Nau D (1994) HTN planning: complexity and expressivity. In: Proceedings of AAAI-94. AAAI Press, pp 1123–1128

  8. Cacace J, Finzi A, Lippiello V, Loianno G, Sanzone D (2013) Aerial service vehicles for industrial inspection: task decomposition and plan execution. In: 26th international conference on industrial engineering and other applications of applied intelligent systems. pp 302–311

  9. Cacace J, Finzi A, Lippiello V, Loianno G, Sanzone D (2013) Integrated planning and execution for an aerial service vehicle. In: 23th international conference on automated planning and scheduling, workshop on planning and robotics

  10. Carloni R, Lippiello V, D’Auria M, Fumagalli M, Mersha AY, Stramigioli S, Siciliano B (2013) Robot vision: obstacle-avoidance techniques for unmanned aerial vehicles. IEEE Robot Autom Mag 20(4): 22–31

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Doherty P, Granlund G, Kuchcinski KSE, Nordberg K, Skarman E, Wiklund J (2000) The WITAS unmanned aerial vehicle project. In: Proceedings of the 14th European conference on artificial intelligence. pp 747–755

  12. Doherty P, Kvarnström J, Fredrik H (2009) A temporal logic-based planning and execution monitoring framework for unmanned aircraft systems. In: AAMAS. pp 332–377

  13. Donnarumma F, Lippiello V, Saveriano M (2012) Fast incremental clustering and representation of a 3D point cloud sequence with planar regions. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems. pp 3475–3480

  14. Finzi A, Orlandini A (2005) Human-robot interaction through mixed-initiative planning for rescue and search rovers. In: AI*IA-05. pp 483–494

  15. Gancet J, Hattenberger G, Alami R, Lacroix S (2005) Task planning and control for a multi-UAV system: architecture and algorithms. In: IROS. pp 1017–1022

  16. Geiger A, Ziegler J, Stiller C (2011) Stereoscan: dense 3D reconstruction in real-time. In: IEEE intelligent vehicles symposium. pp 963–968

  17. Hrabar S (2006) Vision-based 3D navigation for an autonomous helicopter. Ph.D. Thesis, USC, Jan, 2006

  18. Ingrand F, Georgeff M P, Rao A S (1992) An architecture for real-time reasoning and system control. IEEE Exp Intell Syst Appl: 34–44

  19. Lavalle S M (1998) Rapidly-exploring random trees: A new tool for path planning. Computer Science Dept., Iowa State University, Technical Report

  20. Lippiello V, Loianno G, Siciliano B (2011) MAV indoor navigation based on a closed-form solution for absolute scale velocity estimation using optical flow and inertial data. In: 50th IEEE conference on decision and control and european control conference. pp 3566–3571

  21. Lippiello V, Siciliano B (2012) Wall inspection control of a VTOL unmanned aerial vehicle based on a stereo optical flow. In: IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems. pp 4296–4302

  22. Macfarlane S E, Croft E A (2003) Jerk-bounded manipulator trajectory planning: design for real-time applications. IEEE Trans Robot 19: 42–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Marconi L, Basile L, Caprari G, Carloni R, Chiacchio P, Huerzeler C, Lippiello V, Naldi R, Janosch N, Siciliano B, Stramigioli S, Zwicker E (2012) Aerial service robotics: the AIRobots perspective. In: 2nd international conference on applied robotics for the power industry. Zurich Switzerland, pp 64–69

  24. Marconi L, Naldi R, Torre A, Nikolic J, Huerzeler C, Caprari G, Zwicker E, Siciliano B, Lippiello V, Carloni R, Stramigioli S (2012) Aerial service robots: an overview of the AIRobots activity. In: 2nd international conference on applied robotics for the power industry. Zurich, Switzerland, pp 76–77

  25. Marconi L, Melchiorri C, Beetz M, Pangercic D, Siegwart R, Leutenegger S, Carloni R, Stramigioli S, Bruyninckx H, Doherty P, Kleiner A, Lippiello V, Finzi A, Siciliano B, Sala A, Tomatis N (2012) The SHERPA project: smart collaboration between humans and ground-aerial robots for improving rescuing activities in alpine environments. In: Proceedings of the IEEE international workshop on safety security and rescue robotics (SSRR).pp 1–4

  26. Naldi R, Marconi M, Gentili L (2011) Modelling and control of a flying robot interacting with the environment. J IFAC 4(12): 2571–2583

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Nikolic J, Burri M, Rehder J, Leutenegger S, Hurzeler C, Siegwart R (2013) A UAV system for inspection of industrial facilities. In: Proceedings of the IEEE aerospace conference (AeroConf). pp 1–8

  28. Rao A S, Georgeff M P (1991) Deliberation and its role in the formation of intentions. In: UAI. pp 300–307

  29. Stentz A (1995) Optimal and efficient path planning for unknown and dynamic environments. Int J Robot Autom 10(3): 89– 100

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The research leading to these results has been supported by the SHERPA and ARCAS collaborative projects, which have received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreements ICT-600958 and ICT-287617, respectively. The authors are solely responsible for its content. It does not represent the opinion of the European Community and the Community is not responsible for any use that might be made of the information contained therein.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alberto Finzi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cacace, J., Finzi, A., Lippiello, V. et al. Aerial service vehicles for industrial inspection: task decomposition and plan execution. Appl Intell 42, 49–62 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-014-0542-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-014-0542-0

Keywords

Navigation