3-D autonomous navigation in a natural environment

This paper presents a 3D navigation subsystem providing specific treatments needed for the perception and the navigation of an all-terrain mobile robot. This subsystem was developed and integrated in the global framework of the EDEN experimentation. After a brief description of this outdoor navigation experimentation, we describe the natural environment representations we use. Two important perception functions based on 3D data are involved here: fast construction of elevation maps and robot localization. We then describe the 3D motion planner dedicated to the navigation on rugged terrains. The current state of integration of the experiment is finally presented by the mean of experimental results obtained from the natural environment of the mobile robot ADAM