Toward Teach and Repeat Across Seasonal Deep Snow Accumulation

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Boxan, Matěj, Krawciw, Alexander, Barfoot, Timothy D., Pomerleau, François
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Boxan, Matěj
Krawciw, Alexander
Barfoot, Timothy D.
Pomerleau, François
author_facet Boxan, Matěj
Krawciw, Alexander
Barfoot, Timothy D.
Pomerleau, François
contents Teach and repeat is a rapid way to achieve autonomy in challenging terrain and off-road environments. A human operator pilots the vehicles to create a network of paths that are mapped and associated with odometry. Immediately after teaching, the system can drive autonomously within its tracks. This precision lets operators remain confident that the robot will follow a traversable route. However, this operational paradigm has rarely been explored in off-road environments that change significantly through seasonal variation. This paper presents preliminary field trials using lidar and radar implementations of teach and repeat. Using a subset of the data from the upcoming FoMo dataset, we attempted to repeat routes that were 4 days, 44 days, and 113 days old. Lidar teach and repeat demonstrated a stronger ability to localize when the ground points were removed. FMCW radar was often able to localize on older maps, but only with small deviations from the taught path. Additionally, we highlight specific cases where radar localization failed with recent maps due to the high pitch or roll of the vehicle. We highlight lessons learned during the field deployment and highlight areas to improve to achieve reliable teach and repeat with seasonal changes in the environment. Please follow the dataset at https://norlab-ulaval.github.io/FoMo-website for updates and information on the data release.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_01339
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Toward Teach and Repeat Across Seasonal Deep Snow Accumulation
Boxan, Matěj
Krawciw, Alexander
Barfoot, Timothy D.
Pomerleau, François
Robotics
Teach and repeat is a rapid way to achieve autonomy in challenging terrain and off-road environments. A human operator pilots the vehicles to create a network of paths that are mapped and associated with odometry. Immediately after teaching, the system can drive autonomously within its tracks. This precision lets operators remain confident that the robot will follow a traversable route. However, this operational paradigm has rarely been explored in off-road environments that change significantly through seasonal variation. This paper presents preliminary field trials using lidar and radar implementations of teach and repeat. Using a subset of the data from the upcoming FoMo dataset, we attempted to repeat routes that were 4 days, 44 days, and 113 days old. Lidar teach and repeat demonstrated a stronger ability to localize when the ground points were removed. FMCW radar was often able to localize on older maps, but only with small deviations from the taught path. Additionally, we highlight specific cases where radar localization failed with recent maps due to the high pitch or roll of the vehicle. We highlight lessons learned during the field deployment and highlight areas to improve to achieve reliable teach and repeat with seasonal changes in the environment. Please follow the dataset at https://norlab-ulaval.github.io/FoMo-website for updates and information on the data release.
title Toward Teach and Repeat Across Seasonal Deep Snow Accumulation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.01339