edith@ai.toronto.edu (Edith Fraser) (02/23/90)
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
(GB = Galbraith Building, 35 St. George Street)
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
GB305, at 11:00 a.m., 8 March 1990
Eric Krotkov
Carnegie Mellon
Edith Fraser
"CMU Planetary Rover:
Perception for Navigation in Unstructured Terrain"
At Carnegie Mellon University, we are prototyping a legged vehicle called
the Ambler for an exploratory mission on another planet, conceivably Mars,
where it is to traverse uncharted areas and collect material samples. This
talk will provide a brief overview of the project, and then will emphasize
the perception research, focusing on the following:
* Why perception of unstructured terrain poses unique
difficulties that cause established computer vision techniques to fail.
* Algorithms to construct a geometric terrain map
from a single range image and from long sequences of range images;
* New methods to evaluate regions of the constructed maps
to select footholds and to plan trajectories;
* An "active perception" approach to identify material (non-geometric)
properties of the terrain.
* Other techniques to support legged locomotion over rough terrain.