Forward looking InSAR based field terrain mapping for unmanned ground vehicle
Unconstructed environments perception is a challenge problem for Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and is not well solved by traditional sensors, such as: optical camera, lidar and millimeter wave radar. This paper presents a novel forward looking InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) sensor for UGVs and focuses on reconstruction the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of unconstructed environments. DTMs are vital to boost obstacle detection and path planning performances. The forward-looking InSAR system and its signal processing flow are briefly described. Then practical issues of applying the sensor in field environment are addressed. The impacts of height error and pitch angle error of the InSAR antenna are analyzed and solved by the split spectrum algorithm. Field experiment on a rough meadow has shown advanced perception capability of the forward-looking InSAR in complex environments.