Surface/subsurface mapping with an integrated rover-GPR system: A simulation approach

Abstract

Autonomous subsurface mapping is a key characteristic of future robots to be realized in the construction domain, since it can be utilized in diverse applications of strategic importance. During the last years, the interest has been steered mainly towards the development of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) devices, rather than on the establishment of holistic subsurface reconstruction methods. To this end, the paper at hand introduces a simulation tool that comprises a) a surface operating rover and b) a sonar-based simulated GPR array capable, seamlessly integrated to build adjunct surface and subsurface maps. Specifically, by exploiting the onboard stereo camera of the robot and the GPR, mounted on a robotic-trailer topology, joint surface and subsurface mapping is performed. Further processing of the simulated GPR data is applied to detect and semantically annotate georeferenced buried utilities, while the localization of surface rover is also employed for the topographic correction of the accumulated Bscans during the robot's exploration. The proposed framework has been developed in the ROS framework and has been evaluated on the realistic simulation environment of Gazebo.

A Review of 3d Spatial Data Models for Surface and Subsurface Integration of Spatial Objects

“…There is still a need for integration into a broader model that combines all data on the surface including road structure and terrain, to which the subsurface infrastructure is highly linked (Chapman et al, 2020). Regarding surface and subsurface integration, (Kouros et al, 2018) Implementation on real world objects is required (Zhang et al (2011) GeoScope: Full 3D geospatial information system case study 3D data model (framework) A full software architecture was designed for the model.…”

Smart Perception System for Subsurface Robot Mapping: From Simulation to Actual System Realization

“…On the other hand, it documents a novel smart 3D underground mapping framework based on the integration of real GPR antenna with a surface operating rover, suitable for subsurface cyberphysical applications in robotics domain. This book chapter is grounded on our previous works for GPR simulation [6] and subsurface utility mapping [7], yet it has been extended to present more implementation details on the simulation environment, an exhaustive discussion of the radargram preprocessing steps as well as more evaluation results both in simulation and in real environment where the integrated smart perception system has been tested on a custom test field.…”