Simulation of obstacle detection scheme for Mars terrain using minicomputer

Simulation for detection of obstacles on Martian terrain by a laser rangefinder mounted on an autonomous roving vehicle is achieved by a rapid estimation scheme on a computer with IDIIOM display. Near and far edges of pyramids and hemispherical craters or boulders can be recognized if the obstacles are more than about 15 m from the laser rangefinder and the noise standard deviation is less than about 10 cm. If these conditions are not met the rapid estimation scheme can still detect the top edge of a boulder and the near edge of a crater. The scheme is considered equivalent or better than an earlier (Reed, Sanyal, and Shen, 1974) four-directional Laplacian method, but requires slightly more computation.