• KIPS Transactions on Software and Data Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.43-54
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• 2012

This paper presents a new localization technique of an UGV(Unmanned Ground Vehicle) by matching ortho-edge images generated from a DSM (Digital Surface Map) which represents the 3D geometric information of an outdoor navigation environment and 3D range data which is obtained from a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor mounted at the UGV. Recent UGV localization techniques mostly try to combine positioning sensors such as GPS (Global Positioning System), IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), and LIDAR. Especially, ICP (Iterative Closest Point)-based geometric registration techniques have been developed for UGV localization. However, the ICP-based geometric registration techniques are subject to fail to register 3D range data between LIDAR and DSM because the sensing directions of the two data are too different. In this paper, we introduce and match ortho-edge images between two different sensor data, 3D LIDAR and DSM, for the localization of the UGV. Details of new techniques to generating and matching ortho-edge images between LIDAR and DSM are presented which are followed by experimental results from four different navigation paths. The performance of the proposed technique is compared to a conventional ICP-based technique.