Evaluation of 94 GHz Radar Sensor Images Obtained from Industrial Environments

Abstract

Sensing 3-D geometrical properties of an environment is essential for an autonomous vehicle operating inindoor situations like production plants. Compared to Current approaches with wire guidance, autonomous vehicles like mobile robots promise substantially improved flexibility for use in future production plants. Therefore, acquisition of relevant 3-D geometrical information based on sensors is a key requirement for achieving autonomy. Currently at the Technical University of Munich a demonstrator vehicle equipped with a scanning laser camera forthe very close range and a multitask mmwave radar providing 3-D information in the range from 0 m to 50 m is set up to perform autonomous sensorbased locomotion in industrial indoor scenes. This paper reports on evaluation results of the 94 GHz pulse doppler radar with 25 cm radial and 1.5' angular resolution.