UWB and UW Seal
   
Clark F. Olson
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Visual Terrain Mapping for Mars Exploration
Clark F. Olson, Larry H. Matthies, John R. Wright, Ron Li, Kaichang Di
In Proceedings of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, volume 2, pages 762-771, March 2004.
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One goal for future Mars missions is to navigate a rover to science targets not visible to the rover, but seen in orbital or descent images. In order to support and improve long-range navigation capabilities, we generate 3D terrain maps using all available images, including surface images from the lander and/or rover, descent images from the lander, and orbital images from current and future Mars orbiters. The techniques used include wide-baseline stereo mapping for terrain distant from the rover, bundle adjustment for high-accuracy mapping of surface images, and structure-from-motion techniques for mapping using descent and orbital images. The terrain maps are compiled using a system for unifying multi-resolution models and integrating three-dimensional terrains.