Abstract
Next generation planetary rovers will require greater
autonomous navigation capabilities. Such requirements
imply the management of potentially large and rich georeferenced
data sets stored in the form of maps. This paper
presents the design of a data management system that can
be used in the implementation of autonomous navigation
schemes for planetary rovers. It also outlines an approach
that dynamically manages a variety of data content and the
uncertainty of the spatial relationship between two maps; in
addition the proposed framework provides basic path planning
operations through maps, and the correlation of maps
in localization operations. Timing results from a rich data
set demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed framework.
In addition, experimental results on the usage of our Atlas
management system by a rover performing autonomous
navigation operations are also presented.