  The Mining industry considers the deployment of MAV for autonomous inspection
of tunnels and shafts to increase safety and productivity. However, mines are
challenging and harsh environments that have a direct effect on the degradation
of high-end and expensive utilized components over time. Inspired by this
effect, this article presents a low cost and modular platform for designing a
fully autonomous navigating MAV without requiring any prior information from
the surrounding environment. The design of the proposed aerial vehicle can be
considered as a consumable platform that can be instantly replaced in case of
damage or defect, thus comes into agreement with the vision of mining companies
for utilizing stable aerial robots with reasonable cost. In the proposed
design, the operator has access to all on-board data, thus increasing the
overall customization of the design and the execution of the mine inspection
mission. The MAV platform has a software core based on ROS operating on an
Aaeon UP-Board, while it is equipped with a sensor suite to accomplish the
autonomous navigation equally reliable when compared to high-end and expensive
platforms.
