3D Reconstruction of Environments for Tele-Operation of Planetary Rover

In this paper we consider the problem of constructing a 3D environment model for the tele-operation of a planetary rover. We presented our approach to 3D environment reconstruction from large sparse range data sets. In space robotics applications, an accurate and up-to-date model of the environment is very important for a variety of reasons. In particular, the model can be used for safe tele-operation, path planning and mapping points of interest. We propose an on-line reconstruction of the environment using data provided by an on-board high resolution and accurate 3D range sensor (LIDAR). Our approach is based on on-line acquisition of range scans from different view-points with overlapping regions, merge them together into a single point cloud, and then fit an irregular triangular mesh on the merged data. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in localization, path planning and execution scenario on the Mars Yard located at the Canadian Space Agency.