A New Approach to 3-D Terrain Mapping

We discuss the problem of building large, high-resolution three-dimensional representations of unstructured terrain using terrestrial range sensors, which operate at the scale of meters to hundreds of meters. Issues specific to this sensing modality include widely varying resolution, absence of reliably detectable features, and very large data sets. We have developed a map building algorithm that registers and integrates sequences of range images, and we demonstrate its capabilities by building large terrain maps (260 x 166 meters) using ground-based and low-altitude terrestrial range sensors.