Fusing LIDAR and vision for autonomous dirt road following: Incorporating a visual feature into the tentacles approach

Abstract

In this paper we describe how visual features can be incorporated into the well known tentacles approach [1] which up to now has only used LIDAR and GPS data and was therefore limited to scenarios with significant obstacles or non-flat surfaces along roads. In addition we present a visual feature considering only color intensity which can be used to visually rate tentacles. The presented sensor fusion and color based feature were both applied with great success at the C-ELROB 2009 robotic competition.