TY - GEN
T1 - Path planning for mobile robot on rough terrain based on sparse transition cost propagation in extended elevation maps
AU - Ohki, Takeshi
AU - Nagatani, Keiji
AU - Yoshida, Kazuya
PY - 2013/11/25
Y1 - 2013/11/25
N2 - To efficiently evacuate an area threatened by volcanic disaster, onsite observation of active volcanoes by remotely controlled mobile robot systems is desired. Issues involved with developing such systems include planning a safe path for the robots. In this research, our objective was to realize a safe path planning method based on a digital elevation map (DEM) of volcanic mountain fields that considers the mobility of a mobile robot. We assumed that the DEM is obtained through airplane laser measurements beforehand. Because the target environment is vast, obtaining a DEM with sufficiently high resolution is difficult. Even if this is possible, path planning based on such a high-resolution DEM in vast environments significantly increases the computational load. Therefore, we propose a path planning method that can be applied to any DEM resolution; path planning is seamlessly performed roughly in a global scale and precisely in local scales. We extended the general DEM into 3-D space by adding an axis to denote the discrete heading direction of a mobile robot, which we call an extended elevation map (EEM). In the 3-D space EEM, the transition-cost from the start position is derived for each voxel by considering the mobility of the mobile robot. The transition-cost is sparsely propagated from the start position, and the sparsely valued field derives a single path with the lowest transition-cost to reach the goal position. The proposed method was implemented, and simulation experiments using DEMs of real volcanoes were performed to confirm its validity.
AB - To efficiently evacuate an area threatened by volcanic disaster, onsite observation of active volcanoes by remotely controlled mobile robot systems is desired. Issues involved with developing such systems include planning a safe path for the robots. In this research, our objective was to realize a safe path planning method based on a digital elevation map (DEM) of volcanic mountain fields that considers the mobility of a mobile robot. We assumed that the DEM is obtained through airplane laser measurements beforehand. Because the target environment is vast, obtaining a DEM with sufficiently high resolution is difficult. Even if this is possible, path planning based on such a high-resolution DEM in vast environments significantly increases the computational load. Therefore, we propose a path planning method that can be applied to any DEM resolution; path planning is seamlessly performed roughly in a global scale and precisely in local scales. We extended the general DEM into 3-D space by adding an axis to denote the discrete heading direction of a mobile robot, which we call an extended elevation map (EEM). In the 3-D space EEM, the transition-cost from the start position is derived for each voxel by considering the mobility of the mobile robot. The transition-cost is sparsely propagated from the start position, and the sparsely valued field derives a single path with the lowest transition-cost to reach the goal position. The proposed method was implemented, and simulation experiments using DEMs of real volcanoes were performed to confirm its validity.
KW - Mobile robot
KW - digital elevation map
KW - path planning
KW - volcano exploration
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84887978606&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84887978606&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ICMA.2013.6617967
DO - 10.1109/ICMA.2013.6617967
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84887978606
SN - 9781467355582
T3 - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, IEEE ICMA 2013
SP - 494
EP - 499
BT - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, IEEE ICMA 2013
T2 - 2013 10th IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, IEEE ICMA 2013
Y2 - 4 August 2013 through 7 August 2013
ER -