Stereo perception on an off-road vehicle

This paper presents a vehicle for autonomous off-road navigation built in the framework of DARPA's PerceptOR program. Special emphasis is given to the perception system. A set of three stereo camera pairs provide color and 3D data in a wide field of view (greater 100 degree) at high resolution (2160 by 480 pixel) and high frame rates (5 Hz). This is made possible by integrating a powerful image processing hardware called Acadia. These high data rates require efficient sensor fusion, terrain reconstruction and path planning algorithms. The paper quantifies sensor performance and shows examples of successful obstacle avoidance.