An Integrated Terrain Identification Framework for Mobile Robots: System Development, Analysis, and Verification

Abstract

Terrain identification is essential to autonomous control algorithm development for mobile robots. This article proposes an integrated framework to identify terrain parameters based on inertial, and driving current signals. Multiple sources are combined to reduce the instability caused by single signals. A dynamic model of the track-soil system is established as the theoretical basis of identification. All signals are processed in the time, frequency, and time-frequency domains. The features of each domain are generated by statistical methods. To analyze, and select superior feature categories, a maximum-relevance, and minimum-redundancy criterion based on Pearson's correlation is proposed to evaluate the priority of features. A probabilistic neural network is used to identify the category of terrain. All results are analyzed with two factors, source, and input, to find the most effective rule of the proposed framework. The crossing combination analysis is taken into consideration to explore all potential improvement. The results show that the driving current yields comparative identification accuracy as inertial signals. Compared to the single signal source, the method using the combined signal source can effectively improve the accuracy of terrain identification.