Visual teach and repeat for long-range rover autonomy

This paper describes a system built to enable long-range rover autonomy using a stereo camera as the only sensor. During a learning phase, the system builds a manifold map of overlapping submaps as it is piloted along a route. The map is then used for localization as the rover repeats the route autonomously. The use of local submaps allows the rover to faithfully repeat long routes without the need for an accurate global reconstruction. Path following over nonplanar terrain is handled by performing localization in three dimensions and then projecting this down to a local ground plane associated with the current submap to perform path tracking. We have tested this system in an urban area and in a planetary analog setting in the Canadian High Arctic. More than 32 km was covered—99.6p autonomously—with autonomous runs ranging from 45 m to 3.2 km, all without the use of the global positioning system (GPS). Because it enables long-range autonomous behavior in a single command cycle, visual teach and repeat is well suited to planetary applications, such as Mars sample return, in which no GPS is available. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.