3D Reconstruction of Environments for Planetary Exploration

Abstract

 In this paper we present our approach to 3D surface
reconstruction from large sparse range data sets. In space robotics
constructing an accurate model of the environment is very important
for a variety of reasons. In particular, the constructed model can be
used for: safe tele-operation, path planning, planetary exploration
and mapping of points of interest. Our approach is based on acquiring
range scans from different view-points with overlapping regions, merge
them together into a single data set, and fit a triangular mesh on the
merged data points. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach
in a path planning scenario and also by creating the accessibility map
for a portion of the Mars Yard located in the Canadian Space Agency.