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Main Authors: Gibson, Jason, Alavilli, Anoushka, Tevere, Erica, Theodorou, Evangelos A., Spieler, Patrick
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.00581
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author Gibson, Jason
Alavilli, Anoushka
Tevere, Erica
Theodorou, Evangelos A.
Spieler, Patrick
author_facet Gibson, Jason
Alavilli, Anoushka
Tevere, Erica
Theodorou, Evangelos A.
Spieler, Patrick
contents Rapid autonomous traversal of unstructured terrain is essential for scenarios such as disaster response, search and rescue, or planetary exploration. As a vehicle navigates at the limit of its capabilities over extreme terrain, its dynamics can change suddenly and dramatically. For example, high-speed and varying terrain can affect parameters such as traction, tire slip, and rolling resistance. To achieve effective planning in such environments, it is crucial to have a dynamics model that can accurately anticipate these conditions. In this work, we present a hybrid model that predicts the changing dynamics induced by the terrain as a function of visual inputs. We leverage a pre-trained visual foundation model (VFM) DINOv2, which provides rich features that encode fine-grained semantic information. To use this dynamics model for planning, we propose an end-to-end training architecture for a projection distance independent feature encoder that compresses the information from the VFM, enabling the creation of a lightweight map of the environment at runtime. We validate our architecture on an extensive dataset (hundreds of kilometers of aggressive off-road driving) collected across multiple locations as part of the DARPA Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycTXxEosMk
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_00581
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamics Modeling using Visual Terrain Features for High-Speed Autonomous Off-Road Driving
Gibson, Jason
Alavilli, Anoushka
Tevere, Erica
Theodorou, Evangelos A.
Spieler, Patrick
Robotics
Rapid autonomous traversal of unstructured terrain is essential for scenarios such as disaster response, search and rescue, or planetary exploration. As a vehicle navigates at the limit of its capabilities over extreme terrain, its dynamics can change suddenly and dramatically. For example, high-speed and varying terrain can affect parameters such as traction, tire slip, and rolling resistance. To achieve effective planning in such environments, it is crucial to have a dynamics model that can accurately anticipate these conditions. In this work, we present a hybrid model that predicts the changing dynamics induced by the terrain as a function of visual inputs. We leverage a pre-trained visual foundation model (VFM) DINOv2, which provides rich features that encode fine-grained semantic information. To use this dynamics model for planning, we propose an end-to-end training architecture for a projection distance independent feature encoder that compresses the information from the VFM, enabling the creation of a lightweight map of the environment at runtime. We validate our architecture on an extensive dataset (hundreds of kilometers of aggressive off-road driving) collected across multiple locations as part of the DARPA Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dycTXxEosMk
title Dynamics Modeling using Visual Terrain Features for High-Speed Autonomous Off-Road Driving
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.00581