Deep Learned Ground Penetrating Radar Subsurface Features for Robot Localization

Sensors help robots perceive their environment and localize themselves. Determining a robot's location requires a range of sensing systems. Depending on accuracy criteria and navigation conditions, robot localization sensors can differ. Common sensors for robot localization include encoders, GPS, cameras, LIDARs, and IMUs. Traditional sensors are not capable enough in changing environments and uneven terrain. In this paper, we propose a method based on deep learning to use the subsurface features obtained through a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to estimate the odometry of a robot. This proposed method does not rely on visual features or the distance gathered from wheel encoders. The proposed approach was evaluated on a publicly available dataset, and the evaluation results show that the proposed method can be used for robot localization without the need for odometry from wheel encoders.