Abstract
We describe a wheeled robotic system which navigates along outdoor “trails” intended for hikers and bikers. Through a combination of appearance and structural cues derived from stereo omnidirectional color cameras and a tiltable laser range-finder, the system is able to detect and track rough paths despite widely varying tread material, border vegetation, and illumination conditions. The approaching trail region is efficiently segmented in a top-down fashion based on color, brightness, and/or height contrast with flanking areas, and a differential motion planner searches for maximally-safe paths within that region according to several criteria. When the trail tracker’s confidence drops the robot slows down to allow a more detailed search, and when it senses a dangerous situation due to excessive slope, dense trailside obstacles, or visual trail segmentation failure, it stops entirely to acquire and analyze a ladar-derived point cloud in order to reset the tracker. Our system’s ability to negotiate a variety of challenging trail types over long distances is demonstrated through a number of live runs through different terrain and in different weather conditions.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation under award 0546410.
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Rasmussen, C., Lu, Y., Kocamaz, M. (2014). A Trail-Following Robot Which Uses Appearance and Structural Cues. In: Yoshida, K., Tadokoro, S. (eds) Field and Service Robotics. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 92. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40686-7_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40686-7_18
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