Image Classification for Ground Traversability Estimation in Robotics

Mobile ground robots operating on uneven terrain must predict which areas of the environment they are able to pass in order to plan feasible paths. We cast traversability estimation as an image classification problem: we build a convolutional neural network that, given a square 60x60 px image representing the heightmap of a small 1.2x1.2 m patch of terrain, predicts whether the robot will be able to traverse such patch from bottom to top. The classifier is trained for a specific robot model, which may implement any locomotion type (wheeled, tracked, legged, snake-like), using simulation data on a variety of training terrains; once trained, the classifier can be quickly applied to patches extracted from unseen large heightmaps, in multiple orientations, thus building oriented traversability maps. We quantitatively validate the approach on real-elevation datasets.