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.