Honeycomb Map: A Bioinspired Topological Map for Indoor Search and Rescue Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The use of robots to map disasterstricken environments can prevent rescuers from being harmed when exploring an unknown space. In addition, mapping a multirobot environment can help these teams plan their actions with prior knowledge. The present work proposes the use of multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the construction of a topological map inspired by the way that bees build their hives. A UAV can map a honeycomb only if it is adjacent to a known one. Different metrics to choose the honeycomb to be explored were applied. At the same time, as UAVs scan honeycomb adjacencies, RGBD and thermal sensors capture other data types, and then generate a 3D view of the space and images of spaces where there may be fire spots, respectively. Simulations in different environments showed that the choice of metric and variation in the number of UAVs influence the number of performed displacements in the environment, consequently affecting exploration time and energy use.

Resilient Autonomous Exploration and Mapping of Underground Mines using Aerial Robots This paper presents a comprehensive solution to enable resilient autonomous exploration and mapping of underground mines using aerial robots. The described methods and systems address critical challenges related to autonomy, perception and localization in conditions of sensor degradation, exploratory path planning in geometrically complex, large and multibranching environments, alongside reliable robot operation in communicationsdenied settings. To facilitate resilient autonomy in such conditions, a set of novel contributions in multimodal sensor fusion, graphbased path planning, and robot design have been proposed and integrated in micro aerial vehicles which are not subject to the challenging terrain found in such subterranean settings. The capabilities and performance of the proposed solution is fieldverified through a set of reallife autonomous deployments in underground metal mines.