Dynamics Modeling Using Visual Terrain Features for High-Speed Autonomous Off-Road Driving

Rapid autonomous traversal of unstructured terrain is essential for scenarios such as disaster response, search and rescue, and planetary exploration. As a vehicle navigates at the limit of its capabilities over extreme terrain, its dynamics can change suddenly and dramatically. For example, varying terrain can affect parameters such as traction, tire slip, and rolling resistance. To achieve effective planning in such environments, it is crucial to have a dynamics model that can accurately anticipate these conditions and respond before an issue can occur. In this work, we present a hybrid model that predicts the changing dynamics induced by the terrain as a function of visual inputs. We leverage a pre-trained visual foundation model (VFM) DINOv2, which provides rich features that encodes fine-grained semantic information. To use this dynamics model for planning, we propose an end-to-end training architecture for a projection distance independent feature encoder that compresses the information from the VFM, enabling the creation of a lightweight map of the environment at runtime. We validate our architecture on an extensive dataset (hundreds of kilometers of aggressive off-road driving) collected across multiple locations as part of the DARPA Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. https://youtu.be/aydHxLGmnx8