Mobile Robot Traversability Mapping For Outdoor Navigation

Abstract: To avoid getting stuck or causing damage to a vehicle or its surroundings a driver must be able to identify obstacles and adapt speed to ground conditions. An automatically controlled vehicle must be able to handle these identifications and adjustments by itself using sensors, actuators and control software. By storing properties of the surroundings in a map, a vehicle revisiting an area can benefit from prior information.Rough ground may cause oscillations in the vehicle chassis. These can be measured by on-board motion sensors. For obstacle detection, a representation of the geometry of the surroundings can be created using range sensors. Information on where it is suitable to drive, called traversability, can be generated based on these kinds of sensor measurements.In this work, real semi-autonomous mobile robots have been used to create traverasbility maps in both simulated and real outdoor environments. Seeking out problems through experiments and implementing algorithms in an attempt to solve them has been the core of the work.Finding large obstacles in the vicinity of a vehicle is seldom a problem; accurately identifying small near-ground obstacles is much more difficult, however. The work additionally includes both high-level path planning, where no obstacle details are considered, and more detailed planning for finding an obstacle free path. How prior maps can be matched and merged in preparation for path planning operations is also shown. To prevent collisions with unforeseen objects, up-to-date traversability information is used in local-area navigation and obstacle avoidance.