CASE STUDY // SYS-WAREHOUSE-DRONEValidated R&D Prototype
Autonomous Indoor Warehouse Stock Inspection Drone
GPS-denied indoor autonomous quadrotor for automated inventory tracking and barcode scan mapping.
#AERIAL#AUTONOMY#ROBOTICS#MECHATRONICS
DEVELOPMENT YEAR2025
MY ROLEAutonomous Navigation & Sensor Fusion Lead
TEAM STRUCTURERobotics Core Team
VALIDATION STATUSValidated R&D Prototype
THE ENGINEERING PROBLEM
Industrial warehouse inventory verification requires manual labor and scaffolding, presenting safety hazards and operational bottlenecks in GPS-denied indoor spaces.
THE ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION
Built a compact quadrotor with optical flow, LiDAR rangefinder height holding, and onboard camera vision for indoor obstacle-free barcode scanning.
SYSTEM OVERVIEW & ARCHITECTURE
Fuses optical flow velocity sensors with downward LiDAR to maintain stable indoor station-keeping without GPS satellite dependency.
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE BLOCK DIAGRAM FLOW:
Optical Flow + Downward LiDAR → ROS2 Sensor Fusion Node → PX4 Position Controller → High-frequency ESC PWM.
KEY TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS:
- ✓Sub-centimeter hover stability in GPS-denied indoor environments.
- ✓Integrated visual barcode scanning pipeline triggered dynamically during hovering.
HARDWARE & ELECTRONICS
- Ducted-Fan Safety Quadrotor Frame
- Optical Flow Camera Module
- TF-Mini LiDAR
- STM32 Companion Board
SOFTWARE & FIRMWARE
- ROS2
- OpenCV
- PX4 Autopilot
- Python
ALGORITHMS & CONTROL LOOPS
- Indoor Optical Flow Station Keeping
- LiDAR Distance Filtering
- Barcode/QR Recognition Pipeline
COMMUNICATION PROTOCOLS
- I2C
- UART
- MAVLink
ENGINEERING CHALLENGES OVERCOME
- Preventing optical flow drift over low-texture concrete warehouse floors.
MY DIRECT CONTRIBUTIONS
- Engineered sensor integration mount, optical flow calibration script, and ROS2 velocity feedback node.
VALIDATED SYSTEM RESULTS
- ▸Successfully achieved automated indoor rack inspection hovering without external motion-capture cameras.
KEY ENGINEERING LESSONS LEARNED
- ▸Combining optical flow with time-of-flight LiDAR distance sensors drastically improves vertical axis stability indoors.