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Registration of Range Data from Unmanned Aerial and Ground Vehicles

Published

Author(s)

Anthony J. Downs, Rajmohan Madhavan, Tsai Hong Hong

Abstract

In the research reported in this paper, we propose to overcome the unavailability of GPS using combined information obtained froma scanning LADARrangefinder on an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and a LADAR mounted on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) that flies over the terrain being traversed. The approach to estimate and update the position of the UGV involves registering range data from the two LADARs using a combination of a feature-based registration method and a modifiedversion of the well-known Iterative Closest Point(ICP) algorithm. Registration of range data thus guarantees an estimate of the vehicle s position even when only one of the vehicles has GPS information. Additionally, such registration over time (i.e., from sample to sample), enables position information to be maintained even whenboth vehicles can no longer maintain GPS contact. The approach has been validated by conducting systematic experiments on complex real-world data.
Proceedings Title
Applied Image Patter Recognition Workshop (AIPR 2003) | 32nd | Proceedings of the 32nd applied Image Pattern Recognition Workshop (AIPR 2003): Image Data Fusion | IEEE
Conference Dates
October 15-17, 2003
Conference Title
Applied Imagery Pattern Recognition (AIPR) 2003 workshop

Keywords

Feature-based Registration, GPS, ICP, LADAR, Position Estimation, UAV, UGV

Citation

Downs, A. , Madhavan, R. and , T. (2003), Registration of Range Data from Unmanned Aerial and Ground Vehicles, Applied Image Patter Recognition Workshop (AIPR 2003) | 32nd | Proceedings of the 32nd applied Image Pattern Recognition Workshop (AIPR 2003): Image Data Fusion | IEEE, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=823471 (Accessed April 25, 2024)
Created October 1, 2003, Updated February 17, 2017