Sensitivity Analysis of Virtual Terrain Accuracy for Vision Based Algorithms

A number of three-dimensional virtual environments are available to develop vision-based robotic capabilities. These have the advantage of repeated trials at low cost compared to field testing. However, they still suffer from a lack of realism and credibility for validation and verification.This work consists of the creation and validation of state of the art virtual terrains for research in Martian rover vision-based navigation algorithms. This Master's thesis focuses on the creation of virtual environments, which are the exact imitations of the planetary terrain testbed at the European Space Agency's ESTEC site. Two different techniques are used to recreate the Martian-like site in a simulator. The first method uses a novel multi-view stereo reconstruction technique. The second method uses a high precision laser scanning system to accurately map the terrain.Comparison of real environment to the virtual environments is done at exact same locations by making use of captured stereo camera images. Ultimately, the differences will be characterized by the main known feature detectors (e.g. SURF, and SIFT).The present work led to the creation and validation of a database containing highly realistic virtual terrains which can be found on Mars for the purpose of vision-based control algorithms verification.Validerat; 20120821 (anonymous)