Mapping of the environment with a high resolution ground-based radar imager

The aim of this paper is to present the potential of microwave radar as a high resolution ground-based imager, in order to build radar maps in environmental applications. A new radar sensor named K2Pi, based on the principle of frequency-modulated continuous wave (FM-CW) is described. In order to build the radar maps, the R-SLAM algorithm has been developed. It is based on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) principles. The global radar map is constructed through a data merging process, using scan matching of radar image sequences. First results obtained in different environments are presented, which show the ability of the microwave radar to deal with unstructured and extended environments, and to build consistent maps.