Online Road Surface Analysis using Laser Remission in Structured Outdoor Environments

Abstract

This paper describes the novel road surface analysis using intensity of a laser scanner in structured outdoor environments. The proposed approach makes estimation of road surface conditions robust by using information of intensity of a laser that much less depends on brightness of color or ambient lighting than passive camera. Our method can be applied to various structured outdoor environments by online estimating distributions of the intensity from the road surface. This article shows that the method is successfully verified with accuracy of approximately 99% at both the testing course of the 2009 Real World Robot which is known as Tsukuba Challenge and our university campus.