This thesis describes the investigation into the us e a small sensor suite mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle operating inside a building to perfo
rm indoor building inspections. Firstly, a current method of performing inspections is described. Parallels are drawn from this method and a review of
possible alternative methods for gathering inspection data and positioning remote sensors is presented. Using the evidence from this review an a
lternative method for gathering and deploying sensors to perform indoor building inspections is proposed. A mathematical description of the position and orientation of a target in 3D space relative to a known coordinate system is then
described. In order to create a suitable sensor suite a review of laser range scanning methods and camera types is performed, and devices are then sel
ected for use in the sensor suite. Once the sensor suite hardware is chosen a mathematical description of the orientation and position of a target relative to the sensor suite, unmanned aerial vehicle and world coordinate system is
presented. The design and construction of two laboratory test rigs to perform experiments are described in order to evaluate if the first test rig can create 3D point clouds from multiple pitched scans is performed. Following on from the first experiment a second experiment to evaluate if the second test rig can simulate an unmanned aerial vehicle performing an indoor building inspection is
performed. The data gathered from the previous experiments required analysis, and a method for displaying visual and range data gathered by the se
nsor suite on one consistent and useful representation is presented. This method allows both the physical dimensions and visual images gathered by the simulated UAV to be extracted using both data sets. In order to evaluate the
accuracy of the proposed method experiments are performed. The use of the sensor suite on “real world” targets is investigated and experiments performed to validate the choice laser range scanner. Once the laser range scanner is validated further experiments are performed to validate the simulated unmanned aerial vehicle and sensor suite in a “real world” test environment. Finally,
conclusions are drawn as to how well the system works as well as suggestions for the future direction of the project.