Abstract
Laser detection and ranging sensors or LADARs are widely used in mobile robotics as sensing mechanism. When processing LADAR data for the purposes of feature extraction and/or data association, most previous works model such devices as processing range data which follows a normal distribution. In this paper, it will be demonstrated that commonly used LADARs with separated transmitter and receiver configuration suffer from incorrect range readings at range discontinuities due to occlusion, a much more detrimental effect on feature extraction or data association algorithms than random noise. The occurrence of these errors can be reliably predicted by monitoring the received signal strength. A useful design criterion for the optical separation of the transmitter and receiver is derived for non-coaxial LADARs and the exact environmental conditions which can cause range errors is quantified so that such errors can be reliably predicted.
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