A vehicle on a surface: reconstructing shape and discontinuities using rate gyros

Consider a wheeled robot/vehicle equipped with odometers, rate gyros and accelerometers. The problem studied is to extract geometric properties of the surface using these sensors. Same basic results are: conditions are given on the curvature for the point of contact to move continuously along the supporting surface. An robust approximate algorithm for reconstructing a piecewise continuous second order surface is given, where only a rate gyro is used. A 7 meter long ramp, consisting of segments of plane surfaces, was reconstructed within +/-2 cm using a rate gyro with 5 degrees/√_(hr) in drift. Experimental results, when the robot traverses surfaces with different degrees of discontinuity, are presented. The test surfaces included steps and ramps with different heights and inclinations