Qualitative Relational Mapping for Planetary Rover Exploration

This paper presents a novel method for autonomous robotic qualitative mapping of large scale spaces. The proposed framework makes use of a graphical representation of the world in order to build a map consisting of qualitative constraints on the relationships between objects observed by the robot. These relationships are represented in terms of the relative geometrical layout of landmark triplets. A novel measurement method based on camera imagery is presented which extends previous work from the field of Qualitative Spatial Reasoning. Measurements are fused into the map using a deterministic approach based on iterative graph updates. Experimental results are presented for a robot traversing a Mars-like environment while building a relational map.