E ective Perception Capability for a Planetary Exploration Rover via Stereo Vision and Data Fusion

Current space mission plans foresee a strong robotic presence, with the purpose to rely on automatic systems for all tasks resulting di cult or dangerous to man. In the present paper, a project for the development of a robotic platform, to demonstrate robotic autonomy, is generally described. It is based on a flexible and modular software architecture in which each functional module implements a key functionality of the GNC (Guidance Navigation and Control). Details about the stereo vision algorithm for the three-dimensional world point reconstruction are provided, together with hints about a possible fusion with data from a laser scanner. Finally, some preliminary experimental results are shown.