IRS: (Image Range Simulator) A Simulator for Autonomous Land Vehicle Navigation

摘要

The Image Range Simulator (IRS) was developed as a tool for the Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV) project. Ideally, algorithms for processing visual and range images would be developed from real-world data captured by the ALV. However, maintaining an ALV is both expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, changes in weather and the movement of the sun make it very difficult to reproduce conditions exactly for testing purposes. IRS is a computer simulation program that goes beyond mechanical modelling and provides a software testbed for autonomous navigation algorithms. The program allows the user to describe a complex world built from spheres, parallelepipeds, planar surfaces, cones, and cylinders. The program simulates the movement of an Autonomous Land Vehicle and constructs video and range images based on the ALV's field of view as the vehicle moves through the world. Ground maps of the world, as perceived by the ALV, are also created. (edc)