An incremental nonparametric Bayesian clustering-based traversable region detection method

Abstract

Navigation capability in complex and unknown outdoor environments is one of the major requirements for an autonomous vehicle and a robot that perform tasks such as a military mission or planetary exploration. Robust traversability estimation in unknown environments would allow the vehicle or the robot to devise control and planning strategies to maximize their effectiveness. In this study, we present a self-supervised on-line learning architecture to estimate the traversability in complex and unknown outdoor environments. The proposed approach builds a model by clustering appearance data using the newly proposed incremental nonparametric Bayesian clustering algorithm. The clusters are then classified as being either traversable or non-traversable. Because our approach effectively groups unknown regions with similar properties, while the vehicle is in motion without human intervention, the vehicle can be deployed to new environments by automatically adapting to changing environmental conditions. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed clustering algorithm through intensive experiments using synthetic and real data and evaluate the viability of the traversability estimation using real data sets collected in outdoor environment.