Aerial Robots for Prehistoric Caves Exploration and Mapping – ARCAVE

The study of Prehistoric parietal art discovered on cave walls, such as in the Chauvet cave, plays a central role in archaeological research and offers invaluable insights into early human culture and history. These environments are however extremely fragile and often difficult to access, posing significant challenges for researchers. The use of new technologies and, in particular, aerial robots can open new horizons for collecting high-quality data that was previously impossible. Recent developments have led to the availability of small, reliable, and agile platforms that can be equipped with high-resolution sensors. However, existing solutions are not yet ready for direct use, as they lack the necessary level of robustness and are unable to cope with all the constraints imposed by such scenarios. The ARCAVE project, which brings together researchers in robotics and in archaeology, has the ambitious goal of overcoming these limitations and going beyond the state-of-the-art for control, planning, and 3D photogrammetry solutions, in order to obtain high-resolution 3D reconstructions of Prehistoric caves.
The main scientific objectives to achieve this goal are: i) to design and control a robust and adaptable modular aerial robotic system to safely navigate and collect data by carrying different sensors inside a cave; ii) to solve the path planning problem to optimize the data-gathering process for the 3D reconstruction while respecting safety and environmental constraints; iii) to develop appropriate data analysis techniques to exploit the collected data and obtain high-resolution 3D reconstructions.
The obtained solutions will be first tested in non-ornate caves and finally deployed in original ornate caves to generate for the very first time accurate high-quality 3D models of these exceptional sites.