Stored Image-based Map Building and Navigation for Planetary Rovers

A novel method of image-based map building and navigation is proposed for future planetary rovers. The proposed map is not a usual height map, but consists of several images of landmarks connected by the required rover actions from the rover position and orientation from which one of the landmark image is obtained to the position and orientation where another landmark image is obtained. This is similar to the way we usually remember how to get to a certain place from another place, such as "going to the position where building A is seen like this, then turning right until we can see post B and then moving forward until we can find building C", etc. It provides a simple and effective map building especially in the case when a rover wants to make many roundtrips from the key station to experimental sites. The characteristics of this method is that the navigation based on it is robust to the errors in maps as well as in the estimation of current position and orientation of the rovers. Basic concept and algorithm are described, and the results of laboratory experiments are shown and discussed.