Lightweight laser scan registration in underground mines with band-based downsampling method

Abstract

Robots operating in underground mines must accurately track their location and create maps. The rough, undulating floors typical of mine environments preclude the 2D representation of scene integral to many existing real-time mobile robot simultaneous localization and mapping systems. On the other hand, a full 3D solution is made unrealistic by the computational expense of aligning large point clouds. This paper presents an approach that extracts high-density, horizontal bands of laser scans and uses them to represent the scene with detail sufficient to capture the moderate non-planar motion typical of mining robots. Our approach is able to operate in real-time, building maps and localizing in pace with range scanning and is fast enough to allow continuous vehicle motion. We present details of the approach which has been validated in an underground mine. Trials runs have shown a significant decrease in computation time without an appreciable decrease in accuracy over a full 3D strategy. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.