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ARGOS

ARGOS (Autonomous UAV for Inspection and Monitoring in Confined Environments)

The project aims to develop an innovative Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) platform for inspections and surveying in complex industrial and natural environments, such as chemical plants, tunnels, penstocks, and geological sites. These contexts are characterized by confined spaces, lack of GNSS/GPS signals, variable lighting conditions, and obstacles that are not known in advance, making traditional inspection solutions ineffective and limiting the use of conventional drones.
The proposed solution will enable autonomous missions for surveying, infrastructure monitoring, and Search & Rescue operations, even in the absence of external localization infrastructure, ensuring safety and reliability of operations. 

Objectives

The project aims to develop an autonomous UAV capable of operating in confined environments without GNSS signal, with the following main tasks:

  1. Autonomous localization: estimation of the UAV’s position using only onboard sensors, with integration through an Extended Kalman Filter. Two complementary approaches will be employed:
    • Lidar Inertial Odometry (LIO)
    • Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO)
      with the goal of achieving high accuracy and reliability beyond commercial standards.

  2. Real-time mapping: creation of incremental 3D maps of the surrounding environment based on advanced SLAM algorithms, optimized for the selected sensors.
  3. Obstacle avoidance: dynamic updating of the flight trajectory in the presence of obstacles, ensuring safety and successful completion of the overall mission.

Key Development Aspects:

  • Accuracy: reduction of maneuvering margins and access to confined spaces through detailed mapping.
  • Reliability: use of redundant and complementary sensors to ensure performance across different scenarios.
  • Robustness: testing in environments with variable lighting, reflective surfaces, or non-standard features.
  • Software speed: optimized processing for high update rates and reduced energy consumption.
  • Versatility: interchangeable payload with different sensors for heterogeneous missions.

The project integrates hardware and software in an incremental approach, from sensor selection and calibration to the development of VIO, LIO, SLAM, and obstacle avoidance algorithms, culminating in experimental testing in controlled environments and real-world scenarios to validate performance against commercial solutions.

Project Details

Title: Autonomous UAV for Inspection and Monitoring in Confined Environments
Acronym: ARGOS
Funding Program: Autonomous Province of Bolzano – Simplified Experimental Development Projects – Act No. 66/2025
Total Budget: €50,000.00
MAVTech Budget: €50,000.00
Duration: January 2026 to December 2027