FINT

This is the code repository for the paper contributed to IEEE T-RO:

Autonomous Flights Inside Narrow Tunnels

Authors: Luqi Wang, Yan Ning, Hongming Chen, Peize Liu, Yang Xu, Hao Xu, Ximin Lyu, and Shaojie Shen.

This paper introduces an autonomous aerial system designed for narrow tunnel flights. This is the first known autonomous quadrotot system capable of flying through real tunnels in arbitrary diections and as narrow as 0.5 m in cross-section diameter.

Please cite our paper if you use this project in your research:

Wang, L., Ning, Y., Chen, H., Liu, P., Xu, Y., Xu, H., Lyu, X. & Shen, S. (2025). Autonomous Flights Inside Narrow Tunnels. IEEE Transactions on Robotics.

@ARTICLE{wang2025autonomous,
  author={Wang, Luqi and Ning, Yan and Chen, Hongming and Liu, Peize and Xu, Yang and Xu, Hao and Lyu, Ximin and Shen, Shaojie},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Robotics}, 
  title={Autonomous Flights Inside Narrow Tunnels}, 
  year={2025},
  volume={41},
  pages={2230-2250},
  doi={10.1109/TRO.2025.3548525}}

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Contents

• FINT
  • Modules
  • Getting Started
    • Prerequisites
    • Simulation
    • Use VINS-Multi in Real-world UAV Deployment
  • Acknowledgements

Modules

This project includes the following modules:

• UAV Simulator This module provides perception and motion simulation environment.

• Tunnel Planner This module performs map fusion and perception-and-disturbance-aware tunnel planning.

• VINS-Multi A robust optimization-based asynchronous multi-camera-IMU state estimator.

• Quadrotor Msgs Supporting customized ROS messages.

Getting Started

The setup commands have been tested on Ubuntu 20.04 (ROS Noetic). If you are using a different Ubuntu distribution, please modify accordingly.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu and ROS Ubuntu 64-bit 20.04. ROS Noetic. ROS Installation

• NLopt 2.7.1 Follow NLopt Installation.

Simulation

• Clone the repository

  For the simulation, the VINS-Multi submodule is not required, you do not need to pull the submodule

    cd ${YOUR_WORKSPACE_PATH}/src
    git clone https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/FINT.git
    cd ..
    catkin_make
    source devel/setup.bash  
    # or
    source devel/setup.zsh  
  

• Run the simulation

    # open rviz
    roslaunch tunnel_planner tunnel_sim_rviz.launch
    # start the simulator and planner
    roslaunch tunnel_planner drone_small_sim.launch
  

  In the RViz window, click "2D Nav Goal" or press shortcut "G" and then click any point in RViz to start the flight.

Tunnels can be changed in simulator.xml. The following tunnels are provided in this repository:

• sharp_circle_3d
• sharp_rect_3d
• 3d_circle_tunnel
• 3d_rect_tunnel

Use VINS-Multi in Real-world UAV Deployment

• Pull the submodule

  cd ${YOUR_WORKSPACE_PATH}/src/FINT
  git pull --recurse-submodules

• Follow the installation steps in VINS-Multi to get started.

Acknowledgements

• NLOpt: An open-source library for nonlinear optimization
• VINS-Fusion: An open-source library that supports rapid development of software that deals with 3D data