We present the software architecture of a robotic system for mapping abandoned mines. The software is capable of acquiring consistent 2D maps of large mines with many cycles, represented as Markov random fields. 3D C-space maps are acquired from local 3D range scans, which are used to identify navigable paths using A* search. Our system has been deployed in three abandoned mines, two of which inaccessible to people, where it has acquired maps of unprecedented detail and accuracy.
@INPROCEEDINGS{Ferguson03a,
AUTHOR = {D. Ferguson and A. Morris and D. H\"{a}hnel and C. Baker and Z. Omohundro and C. Reverte and S. Thayer and W. Whittaker and W. Whittaker and W. Burgard and S. Thrun},
TITLE = {An Autonomous Robotic System for Mapping Abandoned Mines},
YEAR = {2003},
BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS)},
EDITOR = {S. Thrun and L. Saul and B. Sch\"{o}lkopf},
PUBLISHER = {MIT Press}
}