A System for Volumetric Robotic Mapping of Abandoned Mines

Sebastian Thrun, Dirk Haehnel, David Ferguson, Michael Montemerlo, Rudolph Triebel, Wolfram Burgard, Christopher Baker, Zachary Omohundro, Scott Thayer, and William Whittaker,

This paper describes two robotic systems developed for acquiring accurate volumetric maps of underground mines. One system is based on a cart instrumented by laser range finders, pushed through a mine by people. Another is a remotely controlled mobile robot equipped with laser range finders. To build consistent maps of large mines with many cycles, we describe an algorithm for estimating global correspondences and aligning robot paths. This algorithm enables us to recover consistent maps several hundreds of meters in diameter, without odometric information. We report results obtained in two mines, a research mine in Bruceton, PA, and an abandoned coal mine in Burgettstown, PA.

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@INPROCEEDINGS{Thrun03,
  AUTHOR	= {S. Thrun and D. H\"{a}hnel and D. Ferguson and M. Montemerlo and R. Triebel and W. Burgard and C. Baker and Z. Omohundro and S. Thayer and W. Whittaker},
  TITLE		= {A System for Volumetric Robotic Mapping of Abandoned Mines},
  YEAR		= {2003},
  BOOKTITLE      = {Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
  ADDDRESS      = {Taipei, Taiwan}
}