Enhanced road edge detection (E-RED) for an autonomous planetary rover

Abstract

Our work was in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Satellite Centre (ISAC) to develop an algorithm for road edge detection, for an autonomous planetary rover, and present an approach for maintaining safety in a navigational context. In our algorithm, the sensing of a rover is safely coupled with cameras and Infra-Red (IR) sensors for better navigation. The command motions for self-localization and planning for the prospective motions is done using Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM). The algorithm has been tested using image processing yielding satisfactory result of 64.14%. As a future direction, the results are expected to be applied for space craft navigation in docking.