Qualitative Relational Mapping for Planetary Rovers

This paper presents a novel method for qualitative mapping of large scale spaces. The proposed framework makes use of a graphical representation of the world in order to build a map consisting of qualitative constraints on the geometric relationships between landmark triplets. A novel measurement method based on camera imagery is presented which extends previous work from the field of Qualitative Spatial Reasoning. Measurements are fused into the map using a deterministic approach based on iterative graph updates and permutation operators. Experimental results are presented for a robot traversing a Mars-like environment while building a relational map.