Sensor data fusion for terrain exploration by collaborating unmanned ground vehicles

This paper presents work in progress for the pre-Runners project. The goal is to experimentally demonstrate the value of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in collaboration with a main vehicle in an outdoor setting. With uneven terrain and unexpected obstacles the main vehicle benefits from a priori information of the terrain ahead. This information can be gathered by a smaller, more agile, and risks tolerant autonomous ldquoprerunnerrdquo. The results presented, represent the first steps toward the important task of determining the traversable surfaces and communicating the results within the team. The information sharing between vehicles is based on Collaborative Smoothing and Mapping (C-SAM). The horizontal position is also estimated within the C-SAM. In parallel the vertical component and orientation is estimated by a filter fusing data from odometry, an imu and two lasers to allow computation of traversability maps to be shared within the team.