Drone-Assisted UAV-UGV Collaboration for Autonomous Navigation in Snow-Covered Terrain

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07797v1
• Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2026 22:41:19 GMT
• Title: Drone-Assisted UAV-UGV Collaboration for Autonomous Navigation in Snow-Covered Terrain
• Abstract summary: This paper presents a collaborative UAV-UGV navigation framework for high-altitude, snow-covered terrain.<n>We introduce a custom efficient U-Net architecture that falls under the computational constraints for real-time road segmentation.<n>For UAV localization, we implement an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) fusing onboard GPS and IMU data, achieving a maximum observed positional error of +0.5 meters.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
• Abstract: This paper presents a collaborative UAV-UGV navigation framework for high-altitude, snow-covered terrain, where reduced visibility and unstable ground render conventional methods ineffective. We introduce a custom efficient U-Net architecture that falls under the computational constraints for real-time road segmentation, utilizing a novel synthetic snow data augmentation technique to achieve 96.5% segmentation accuracy. For UAV localization, we implement an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) fusing onboard GPS and IMU data, achieving a maximum observed positional error of +-0.5 meters. The UGV position is determined via a visual tracking pipeline using YOLOv5 and depth data from the UAV's RGB-D camera. A dynamic path planning algorithm utilizes this segmentation to adjust for snow drifts, enabling successful navigation in obscured test environment with minimal deviation.

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