HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/FUEL

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

1461 stars · 251 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

FUEL is a C++/ROS framework for fast autonomous UAV exploration, built around an incremental Frontier Information Structure and hierarchical planning that generates coverage paths, local viewpoints, and minimum-time trajectories. It claims 3-8x faster exploration than prior state-of-the-art approaches and runs in CPU-based simulation without requiring CUDA.

Use cases

• plan autonomous exploration paths for a quadrotor in unknown environments
• simulate fast UAV exploration of indoor and outdoor spaces
• research frontier-based exploration planning for drones
• generate minimum-time trajectories for aerial robots
• benchmark exploration planners against state-of-the-art methods
• build a drone that autonomously maps an unknown area

When to choose

• you need a proven, fast autonomous exploration stack for a quadrotor
• you want a research-grade baseline for UAV exploration planning papers
• you need CPU-only simulation of exploration without CUDA dependencies
• you want incremental frontier structure maintenance integrated with online mapping

When to avoid

• you need multi-UAV decentralized exploration - use the companion RACER project instead
• you target non-ROS or non-Linux platforms
• you need ground robots or other non-aerial platforms without adaptation
• you want a production-ready commercial autopilot rather than research code

Facets

library · maturity stable

simulation robotics robotics autonomous-vehicles simulation cpp uav aerial-robotics exploration frontier-based-planning quadrotor motion-planning autonomous-navigation research-code linux ros

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/FUEL")