Off-road robotics perception and navigation

The research in off-road robotics is focusing on autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles able to navigate in rough terrain without a predefined trail. Typical examples are agriculture and forestry machines or planetary rovers. Detailed environmental perception and navigation strategies under various soil conditions have to be examined for developing an adequate control concept for such vehicles. Due to noisy, erroneous sensor measurements and rough ground conditions, it is essential, that the control architectures are characterized by a high robustness. The often used sense, plan, act strategies have the drawback that in case of unexpected states, re-planning of control sequences has to be determined.