Title :
Robust multi-sensor, day/night 6-DOF pose estimation for a dynamic legged vehicle in GPS-denied environments
Author :
Ma, Jeremy ; Susca, Sara ; Bajracharya, Max ; Matthies, Larry ; Malchano, Matt ; Wooden, Dave
Author_Institution :
Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA
Abstract :
We present a real-time system that enables a highly capable dynamic quadruped robot to maintain an accurate 6-DOF pose estimate (better than 0.5m over every 50m traveled) over long distances traversed through complex, dynamic outdoor terrain, during day and night, in the presence of camera occlusion and saturation, and occasional large external disturbances, such as slips or falls. The system fuses a stereo-camera sensor, inertial measurement units (IMU), and leg odometry with an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to ensure robust, low-latency performance. Extensive experimental results obtained from multiple field tests are presented to illustrate the performance and robustness of the system over hours of continuous runs over hundreds of meters of distance traveled in a wide variety of terrains and conditions.
Keywords :
Global Positioning System; Kalman filters; cameras; legged locomotion; pose estimation; real-time systems; robot vision; sensor fusion; stereo image processing; terrain mapping; 6-DOF pose estimation; EKF; GPS-denied environments; IMU; camera occlusion; camera saturation; dynamic legged vehicle; dynamic outdoor terrain; dynamic quadruped robot; extended Kalman filter; inertial measurement units; leg odometry; low-latency performance; multiple field tests; real-time system; robust multisensor; stereo-camera sensor; Cameras; Global Positioning System; Robot sensing systems; Vehicle dynamics; Vehicles; Visualization;
Conference_Titel :
Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012 IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Saint Paul, MN
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1403-9
Electronic_ISBN :
1050-4729
DOI :
10.1109/ICRA.2012.6225132