Online road surface analysis using laser remission value in urban environments

This paper describes the novel road surface analysis using reflectivity of a laser scanner in structured outdoor environments. The proposed approach makes estimation of road surface conditions robust by using information of remission value as reflectivity of a laser that much less depends on brightness of color or ambient lighting than passive camera. Our method can be applied to various structured outdoor environments by online estimating distributions of the remission value from the road surface. This article shows that the method is successfully verified with accuracy of approximately 99% at both (i) the testing course of the 2009 Real World Robot Challenge which is known as “Tsukuba Challenge” and (ii) our university campus.