Driving with tentacles: Integral structures for sensing and motion

In this paper we describe a LIDAR-based navigation approach applied at both the C-Elrob (European Land Robot Trial) 2007 and the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. At the C-Elrob 2007 the approach was used without any prior knowledge about the terrain and without global positioning system (GPS). At the Urban Challenge the approach was combined with a GPS-based path follower. At the core of the method is a set of tentacles that represent precalculated trajectories defined in the ego-centered coordinate space of the vehicle. Similar to an insect's antennae or feelers, they fan Out with different curvatures discretizing the basic driving options of the vehicle. We detail how the approach can be used for exploration of unknown environments and how it can be extended to combined GPS path following and obstacle avoidance allowing safe road following in case of GPS offsets. (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.