Status report on next generation LADAR for driving unmanned ground vehicles

Published

October 28, 2004

Author(s)

Maris Juberts, Tony Barbera

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Defense has initiated plans for the deployment of autonomous robotic vehicles in various tactical military operations starting in about seven years. Most of these missions will require the vehicles to drive autonomously over open terrain and on roads which may contain traffic, obstacles, military personnel as well as pedestrians. Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) must therefore be able to detect, recognize and track objects and terrain features in very cluttered environments. Although several LADAR sensors exist today which have successfully been implemented and demonstrated to provide somewhat reliable obstacle detection and can be used for path planning and selection, they tend to be limited in performance, are effected by obscurants, and are quite large and expensive. In addition, even though considerable effort and funding has been provided by the DOD R&D community, nearly all of the development has been for target detection (ATR) and tracking from various flying platforms. Participation in the Army and DARPA sponsored UGV programs has helped NIST to identify requirement specifications for LADAR to be used for on and off-road autonomous driving. This paper describes the expected requirements for a next generation LADAR for driving UGVs and presents an overview of proposed LADAR design concepts and a status report on current developments in scannerless Focal Plane Array (FPA) LADAR and advanced scanning LADAR which may be able to achieve the stated requirements. Examples of real-time range images taken with existing LADAR prototypes will be presented.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of SPIE Optics East 2004

Conference Dates

October 25-28, 2004

Conference Location

Philadelphia, PA

Conference Title

Industrial Optical Robotic Systems Technology & Applications

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

field-of-view (FOV), Focal Plane Array (FPA) laser radar, LADAR/LIDAR Sensors, Mobiltiy, on & off autonomous driving, Unmanned Systems

Citation

Juberts, M. and Barbera, T. (2004), Status report on next generation LADAR for driving unmanned ground vehicles, Proceedings of SPIE Optics East 2004, Philadelphia, PA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=822560 (Accessed April 25, 2024)