Obstacle detection in smooth high curvature terrain

Detection of obstacles for autonomous vehicles is more difficult when the terrain is not locally planar and remains an open problem. We have developed an approach suited for obstacle detection in those cases where the terrain has significant curvature but is smooth enough that the obstacles are discrete. Our system consists of a low-cost scanning laser rangefinder and a novel algorithm that can reliably detect obstacles as small as 15 cm in curving terrain. This paper presents an analysis of the effectiveness of our system and a summary of experimental results from an outdoor mobile robot.