Local Navigation using Traversability Maps

In outdoor robotics it is important to be able to ascertain the traversability of the surrounding terrain. This paper presents a system where continuously generated traversability maps, useful for obstacle avoidance, are generated, stored and later reused to perform detailed local path planning. The detailed plan can be used as a temporary replacement for parts of a global plan that may lack knowledge about impassable obstacles or troublesome areas. The paper also describes an algorithm useful for on-line alignment and merging of previously stored traversability maps. Being able to align and merge maps is vital as the estimated global poses of multiple overlapping maps stored at different times may differ.