3D MAP BUILDING FOR PLANETARY ROVER LOCALIZATION AND PATH PLANNING

This paper considers the problem of constructing a 3D environment model for space robotics applications. We presented our approach to 3D environment reconstruction from large sparse range data sets. In space robotics applications an accurate and up-to-date model of the environment is very important for variety of reasons. In particular, the model can be used for safe tele-operation, path planning and mapping of points of interest. We propose an on-line reconstruction of the environment using data provided by an on-board 3D range sensor LIDAR. The experiment results demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach in localization, path planning and following scenario on the Mars Yard located at Canadian Space Agency.