3D Place Recognition and Object Detection using a Small-sized Quadrotor

We present a system for 3D place recognition and object detection using a small-sized quadrotor. The robot is equipped with a horizontally scanning 2D range-scanner and occasionally acquires 3D scans by hovering on the spot and changing its altitude. Our approach is able to accurately and robustly recognize previously seen places of the environment. Additionally, our system can be applied to match the current observations to models stored in a database which allows the robot to perform object detection. We evaluate our approach in real-world experiments to demonstrate the robustness and reliability of our algorithms.