Terrain-Aware Autonomous Exploration of Unstructured Confined Spaces

  • Héctor Azpúrua UFMG
  • Mario F. M. Campos UFMG
  • Douglas G. Macharet UFMG

Resumo


This work addresses the problem of exploring confined environments autonomously using terrestrial mobile robots. We propose a methodology for path planning in rough three-dimensional terrains and an exploration strategy that uses the map’s navigable areas, the related navigation cost, and the information expected from a frontier to select the next promising exploration sector. The safe path generation algorithm models the environment as a graph and uses a linear combination of weights applied to multiple traversability metrics of the terrain. The exploration phase uses the expected volumetric information of frontiers; this way, the exploration areas are selected according to their expected utility and visitation cost. We also propose an online planning phase using the raw point cloud to avoid obstacles. The online phase is faster to compute and uses the MI-RRT algorithm, an RRT-based planner biased towards the most informative frontier, capable of simultaneously planning and selecting a target frontier.

Palavras-chave: Exploration, Confined and Subterranean Spaces, Terrain-aware path planning

Referências

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Publicado
18/10/2022
AZPÚRUA, Héctor; CAMPOS, Mario F. M.; MACHARET, Douglas G.. Terrain-Aware Autonomous Exploration of Unstructured Confined Spaces. In: CONCURSO DE TESES E DISSERTAÇÕES EM ROBÓTICA - CTDR (DOUTORADO) - SIMPÓSIO BRASILEIRO DE ROBÓTICA E SIMPÓSIO LATINO-AMERICANO DE ROBÓTICA (SBR/LARS), 14. , 2022, São Bernardo do Campo/SP. Anais [...]. Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação, 2022 . p. 97-108. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/wtdr_ctdr.2022.226846.