3D path planning and execution for search and rescue ground robots

Francis Colas (1) , Srivatsa Mahesh (1) , François Pomerleau (1) , Ming Liu (1) , Roland Siegwart (1)

1 ASL - Autonomous Systems Lab

One milestone for autonomous mobile robotics is to endow robots with the capability to compute the plans and motor commands necessary to reach a defined goal position. For indoor or car-like robots moving on flat terrain, this problem is well mastered and open-source software can be deployed to such robots. However, for many applications such as search and rescue, ground robots must handle three-dimensional terrain. In this article, we present a system that is able to plan and execute a path in a complex environment starting from noisy sensor input. In order to cope with the complexity of a high-dimensional configuration space, we separate position and configuration planning. We demonstrate our system on a search and rescue robot with flippers by climbing up and down a difficult curved staircase.

Mots clés: 3d path-planning; 3d navigation

Domaines: Robotique [cs.RO]

Francis Colas, Srivatsa Mahesh, François Pomerleau, Ming Liu, Roland Siegwart. 3D path planning and execution for search and rescue ground robots. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2013, Tokyo, Japan. pp.722--727, ⟨10.1109/IROS.2013.6696431⟩. ⟨hal-01143103⟩