A planetary exploration rover's ability to detect the type of supporting surface is critical to the successful accomplishment of the planned task, especially for long-range and long-duration missions. This paper presents a general approach to endow a robot with the ability to sense the terrain being traversed. It relies on the estimation of motion states and physical variables pertaining to the interaction of the vehicle with the environment. First, a comprehensive proprioceptive feature set is investigated to evaluate the informative content and the ability to gather terrain properties. Then, a terrain classifier is developed grounded on Support Vector Machine (SVM) and that uses an optimal proprioceptive feature set. Following this rationale, episodes of high slippage can be also treated as a particular terrain type and detected via a dedicated classifier. The proposed approach is tested and demonstrated in the field using SherpaTT rover, property of DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), that uses an active suspension system to adapt to terrain unevenness.

Terrain estimation for planetary exploration robots / Dimastrogiovanni, Mauro; Cordes, Florian; Reina, Giulio. - In: APPLIED SCIENCES. - ISSN 2076-3417. - ELETTRONICO. - 10:17(2020). [10.3390/app10176044]

Terrain estimation for planetary exploration robots

Giulio Reina
2020-01-01

Abstract

A planetary exploration rover's ability to detect the type of supporting surface is critical to the successful accomplishment of the planned task, especially for long-range and long-duration missions. This paper presents a general approach to endow a robot with the ability to sense the terrain being traversed. It relies on the estimation of motion states and physical variables pertaining to the interaction of the vehicle with the environment. First, a comprehensive proprioceptive feature set is investigated to evaluate the informative content and the ability to gather terrain properties. Then, a terrain classifier is developed grounded on Support Vector Machine (SVM) and that uses an optimal proprioceptive feature set. Following this rationale, episodes of high slippage can be also treated as a particular terrain type and detected via a dedicated classifier. The proposed approach is tested and demonstrated in the field using SherpaTT rover, property of DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), that uses an active suspension system to adapt to terrain unevenness.
2020
Terrain estimation for planetary exploration robots / Dimastrogiovanni, Mauro; Cordes, Florian; Reina, Giulio. - In: APPLIED SCIENCES. - ISSN 2076-3417. - ELETTRONICO. - 10:17(2020). [10.3390/app10176044]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11589/214927
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