Automated three-dimensional axis mapping with a mobile platform

An axis map (AM) represents the orientations of planar surfaces in an environment and is void of positional information. Three-dimensional axis mapping (3DAM) is a graph-based optimization algorithm that generates an AM, while carefully addressing the parameterization of axes (i.e., normal vectors). 3DAM exploits the lack of positional information to form a densely connected graph. This paper provides a detailed description of the parameterization of axes, an outline of the 3DAM algorithm, as well as outdoor experimental results showing the usefulness of AMs as a tool for mobile autonomous geotechnical mapping.