[Lab meeting] 02/25/08 (Ekker): 3D-Odometry for rough terrain-Towards real 3D navigation

Pierre Lamon and Roland Siegwart
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL)
Pierre.Lamon@epfl.ch, Roland.Siegwart@epfl.ch
From :Robotics and Automation, 2003. Proceedings. ICRA '03. IEEE International
Abstract
Up to recently autonomous mobile robots were mostly
designed to run within an indoor, yet partly structured
and flat, environment. In rough terrain many problems
arise and position tracking becomes more difficult. The
robot has to deal with wheel slippage and large
orientation changes. In this paper we will first present the
recent developments on the off-road rover Shrimp. Then a
new method, called 3D-Odometry, which extends the
standard 2D odometry to the 3D space will be developed.
Since it accounts for transitions, the 3D-Odometry
provides better position estimates. It will certainly help to
go towards real 3D navigation for outdoor robots.
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