Over-The-Horizon Autonomous Rover Navigation: Experimental Results

Abstract

This paper presents the approach for autonomous over-the-horizon rover navigation developed at the Canadian Space Agency. The adopted sensing modality is the one of LIDAR range sensors due to their robustness in the harsh lighting conditions of space. Irregular triangular meshes (ITM) are used for representing the environment providing with an accurate yet compact spatial representation. The ITM is directly usable by path planning algorithms based on efficient graph search such as A*. Experimental results from the 2006 and 2007 extensive field-testing campaigns are provided.