Research Summaries

Back Autonomous Interior Mapping Robot Utilizing LIDAR Localization and Mapping (LLAM)

Fiscal Year 2020
Division Graduate School of Engineering & Applied Science
Department Electrical & Computer Engineering
Investigator(s) Payne, Jameson S.
Sponsor Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific (Navy)
Summary The fields of autonomous robotics and human-machine teaming are rapidly expanding and have direct relevance to the US Military. Autonomous robots have the potential to both increase the lethality of our warfighters, as well as increase their survivability in combat. To this end, we intend to research the use of 3D LIDAR for both the localization and interior mapping of an autonomous robot. The intended endstate is to determine if an autonomous robot equipped with a single 3D LIDAR sensor can accurately and efficiently map the interior of rooms, and relay that information wirelessly to tactical level operators for on-scene planning. Previous work at NPS has examined the use of 2D LIDAR for obstacle detection and route planning. Although, 2D LIDAR has been demonstrated sufficient for obstacle detection and avoidance, it does not produce a map that is sufficient for tactical planning. Similarly, autonomous mapping robots equipped with inertial measurement units, wheel encoders, and optical sensors have been demonstrated effective, but multiple sensors add both weight and complexity to the robot. A single sensor simplifies the design and reduces the load of our warfighters. However, the processing power required to analyze the data set and produce a useable map from LIDAR alone, pushes the limits of mobile computing power. We believe this is a solvable problem and intend to develop algorithms that can both map the interior of rooms accurately and efficiently, and be combined with obstacle detection and route optimization so that the robot can create a map without being directly controlled by a human operator.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal