10.1184/R1/6560885.v1 Alex Foessel Alex Foessel Sachin Chheda Sachin Chheda Dimitrios Apostolopoulos Dimitrios Apostolopoulos Short-Range Millimeter-Wave Radar Perception in a Polar Environment Carnegie Mellon University 1999 Millimeter-wave radar millimeter-wave imaging radar scattering mobile robots robot sensing 1999-01-01 00:00:00 Journal contribution https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Short-Range_Millimeter-Wave_Radar_Perception_in_a_Polar_Environment/6560885 Autonomous vehicle operations in Antarctica challenge robotic perception. Flying ice and snow, changing illumination due to low sun angles and lack of contrast degrade stereo and laser sensing. Millimeter-wave radar offers remarkable advantages as a robotic perception modality because it is not as sensitive to the aforementioned conditions. Experiments with millimeter-wave radar in an Antarctic environment show minimal degradation of millimeter-wave sensing capabilities under blowing-snow conditions, as well as backscatter obtained from polar-terrain surfaces at grazing angles and detection of obstacles commonly found in polar areas. This paper presents issues relevant to short-range radar perception for a mobile robot in an Antarctic environment. The article describes the experiments and data-analysis procedures, and draws conclusions on the utility of millimeter-wave radar as a robotic sensor for obstacle avoidance and navigation in polar settings.