Real-time dense digital elevation map estimation using laserscanner and camera SLAM process

This paper is about environment perception for navigation system in outdoor applications. Unlike other approaches that try to detect an obstacle of binary state, we consider here a Digital Elevation Map (DEM). This map has to be built in regards to the guidance system´s needs. These needs depend on the vehicle capabilities, its dynamics constraints, its speed etc... Starting with the navigation system´s needs, our goal is to estimate a precise and dense DEM. Our approach is based on a SLAM algorithm combining a 2D rangefinder and a camera. Thus we can estimate both the displacement between two laser scan and have a good density of the reconstructed DEM. The approach has been validated both using simulated realistic data and real data in real-time on our robot in outdoor environment (approx. 40ms per loop).