Off-Road Autonomous Mobility

Off-road autonomous navigation poses a challenging problem, as the surrounding terrain is usually unknown, the support surface the vehicle must traverse cannot be considered flat, and environmental features (such as vegetation and water) make it difficult to estimate the support surface elevation. This paper will focus on Robotic Research’s suite of off-road autonomous planning and obstacle avoidance tools. Specifically, this paper will provide an overview of our terrain detection system, which utilizes advanced LADAR processing techniques to provide an estimate of the surface. Additionally, it will describe the kino-dynamic off-road planner which can, in real-time, calculate the optimal route, taking into account the support surface, obstacles sensed in the environment, and more. Finally, the paper will explore how these technologies have been applied to a wide variety of different robotic applications.