Automation of Structure Inspection Tasks Using DJI Quadrotors

This paper presents the design and implementation of a system to automate the task of inspection of a physical structure, surrounded by one of three boundary models provided (plane, box or cylinder), using a DJI quadrotor. First, the system plans the flight trajectory of the quadrotor accordingly, to ensure that the whole surface's model is covered in the inspection and then executes the flight autonomously. The system is made up of two main software components: a ROS2 robotics application and Android application. The ROS2-based application is used to plan the flight path and control the quadrotor to follow the path, and the Android application to allow communication with the quadrotor using the DJI Mobile SDK V4. The system was tested using the Gazebo simulator and the DJI Assistant 2 simulator to ensure correct functionality. Finally, it was tested in experimental scenarios by flying a DJI Mavic Pro quadrotor with effective results.