Learning slip behavior using automatic mechanical supervision

We address the problem of learning terrain traversability properties from visual input, using automatic mechanical supervision collected from sensors onboard an autonomous vehicle. We present a novel probabilistic framework in which the visual information and the mechanical supervision interact to learn particular terrain types and their properties. The proposed method is applied to learning of rover slippage from visual information in a completely automatic fashion. Our experiments show that using mechanical measurements as automatic supervision significantly improves the visual-based classification alone and approaches the results of learning with manual supervision. This work will enable the rover to drive safely on slopes, learning autonomously about different terrains and their slip characteristics.