Terrain Feature Extraction and Classification using Contact Sensor Data

Outdoor mobile robots are faced with various terrain types having different characteristics. To run safely and carry out the mission, mobile robot should recognize terrain types, physical and geometric characteristics and so on. It is essential to control appropriate motion for each terrain characteristics. One way to determine the terrain types is to use non-contact sensor data such as vision and laser sensor. Another way is to use contact sensor data such as slope of body, vibration and current of motor that are reaction data from the ground to the tire. In this paper, we presented experimental results on terrain classification using contact sensor data. We made a mobile robot for collecting contact sensor data and collected data from four terrains we chose for experimental terrains. Through analysis of the collecting data, we suggested a new method of terrain feature extraction considering physical characteristics and confirmed that the proposed method can classify the four terrains that we chose for experimental terrains. We can also be confirmed that terrain feature extraction method using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) typically used in previous studies and the proposed method have similar classification performance through back propagation learning algorithm. However, both methods differ in the amount of data including terrain feature information. So we defined an index determined by the amount of terrain feature information and classification error rate. And the index can evaluate classification efficiency. We compared the results of each method through the index. The comparison showed that our method is more efficient than the existing method.

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