Calibration, terrain reconstruction and path planning for a planetary exploration system

In this paper, three important preparation tasks of a planetary exploration system are described, namely calibration, terrain reconstruction and path planning. The calibration is retrieved from the images of the planetary terrain (the same images from which the 3D measurements of the terrain are obtained). Once the system has been calibrated, the same images can be used to estimate a digital elevation map of the environment around the lander. These images are r st processed pairwise using a stereo algorithm yielding sub-pixel disparity maps. In order to perform the path planning a digital elevation map is required. An algorithm is described which can generate a regular digital elevation map at any desired resolution (interpolating if necessary) and easily takes occlusions into account. The results of the calibration and reconstruction are then used by the path planning module which is capable of computing the optimal path between points of interest of the terrain.