WetExplorer: Automating Wetland Greenhouse-Gas Surveys with an Autonomous Mobile Robot

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Vasquez, Jose, Zhang, Xuping
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Vasquez, Jose
Zhang, Xuping
author_facet Vasquez, Jose
Zhang, Xuping
contents Quantifying greenhouse-gases (GHG) in wetlands is critical for climate modeling and restoration assessment, yet manual sampling is labor-intensive, and time demanding. We present WetExplorer, an autonomous tracked robot that automates the full GHG-sampling workflow. The robot system integrates low-ground-pressure locomotion, centimeter-accurate lift placement, dual-RTK sensor fusion, obstacle avoidance planning, and deep-learning perception in a containerized ROS2 stack. Outdoor trials verified that the sensor-fusion stack maintains a mean localization error of 1.71 cm, the vision module estimates object pose with 7 mm translational and 3° rotational accuracy, while indoor trials demonstrated that the full motion-planning pipeline positions the sampling chamber within a global tolerance of 70 mm while avoiding obstacles, all without human intervention. By eliminating the manual bottleneck, WetExplorer enables high-frequency, multi-site GHG measurements and opens the door for dense, long-duration datasets in saturated wetland terrain.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_10864
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle WetExplorer: Automating Wetland Greenhouse-Gas Surveys with an Autonomous Mobile Robot
Vasquez, Jose
Zhang, Xuping
Robotics
Systems and Control
Quantifying greenhouse-gases (GHG) in wetlands is critical for climate modeling and restoration assessment, yet manual sampling is labor-intensive, and time demanding. We present WetExplorer, an autonomous tracked robot that automates the full GHG-sampling workflow. The robot system integrates low-ground-pressure locomotion, centimeter-accurate lift placement, dual-RTK sensor fusion, obstacle avoidance planning, and deep-learning perception in a containerized ROS2 stack. Outdoor trials verified that the sensor-fusion stack maintains a mean localization error of 1.71 cm, the vision module estimates object pose with 7 mm translational and 3° rotational accuracy, while indoor trials demonstrated that the full motion-planning pipeline positions the sampling chamber within a global tolerance of 70 mm while avoiding obstacles, all without human intervention. By eliminating the manual bottleneck, WetExplorer enables high-frequency, multi-site GHG measurements and opens the door for dense, long-duration datasets in saturated wetland terrain.
title WetExplorer: Automating Wetland Greenhouse-Gas Surveys with an Autonomous Mobile Robot
topic Robotics
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.10864