{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,24]],"date-time":"2025-12-24T12:14:53Z","timestamp":1766578493848},"reference-count":20,"publisher":"Cambridge University Press (CUP)","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2013,5,14]],"date-time":"2013-05-14T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1368489600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/terms"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Robotica"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2013,10]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>SUMMARY<\/jats:title><jats:p>Safe navigation of robotic vehicles is considered as a key pre-requisite of successful mission operations within highly adverse and unconstrained environments. While there has been extensive research in the perception of positive obstacles, little progress can be accredited to the field of negative obstacles. This paper hypostatizes an elaborative attempt to address the problem of negative obstacle detection and traversability analysis in the form of gaps by processing 3-dimensional range data. The domain of application concerns Urban Search and Rescue scenarios that reflect environments of increased complexity in terms of diverse terrain irregularities. To allow real-time performance and, in turn, timely prevention of unrecoverable robotic states, the proposed approach is based on the application of efficient image morphological operations for noise reduction and border following the detection and grouping of gaps. Furthermore, we reason about gap traversability, a concept that is novel within the field. Traversability assessments are based on features extracted through Principal Component Analysis by exploring the spatial distribution of the interior of the individual gaps or the orientation distribution of the corresponding contour. The proposed approach is evaluated within a realistic scenario of a tunnel car accident site and a challenging outdoor scenario. Using a contemporary Search and Rescue robot, we have performed extensive experiments under various parameter settings that allowed the robot to always detect the real gaps, and either optimally cross over those that were traversable or otherwise avoid them.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1017\/s0263574713000349","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2013,5,22]],"date-time":"2013-05-22T09:04:53Z","timestamp":1369213493000},"page":"1085-1101","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":23,"title":["Mind the gap: detection and traversability analysis of terrain gaps using LIDAR for safe robot navigation"],"prefix":"10.1017","volume":"31","author":[{"given":"Arnab","family":"Sinha","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Panagiotis","family":"Papadakis","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"56","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2013,5,14]]},"reference":[{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref15","first-page":"621","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 21th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication","author":"Mioch"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref13","unstructured":"L. Matthies , A. Kelly , T. Litwin and G. Tharp , \u201cObstacle Detection for Unmanned Ground Vehicles: A Progress Report,\u201d In: Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Conference (1995) pp. 66\u201371."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref1","unstructured":"P. Bellutta , R. Manduchi , L. Matthies , K. Owens and A. Rankin , \u201cTerrain Perception for Demo III.\u201d Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (2000)."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/rob.20127"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1111\/j.1467-8659.2007.01062.x"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref2","volume-title":"Mobile robot. No. PCT\/EP2011\/060937","year":"2011"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref3","unstructured":"Intel Corporation, Open source computer vision library, Available at: http:\/\/opencv.willowgarage.com\/wiki\/ (Aug. 2011). (Accessed April 2013)"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"G. Dubbelmanand , W. van der Mark , J. C. J. van den Heuvel and F. C. A. Groen , \u201cObstacle Detection During Day and Night Conditions Using Stereo Vision,\u201d Proceedings of the IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2007).","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2007.4399055"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref7","unstructured":"N. Heckman , J.-F. Lalonde , N. Vandapel and M. Hebert , \u201cPotential Negative Obstacle Detection by Occlusion Labeling,\u201d In: Proceedings of the IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2007) pp. 2168\u20132173."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/0278364906065543"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1002\/rob.20134"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"J. Larson and M. Trivedi , \u201cLidar Based Off-Road Negative Obstacle Detection and Analysis,\u201d Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2011).","DOI":"10.1109\/ITSC.2011.6083105"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"G.-J. Kruijff , M. Janicek , S. Keshavdas , B. Larochelle , H. Zender , N. Smets , T. Mioch , M. Neerincx , J. van Diggelen , F. Colas , M. Liu , F. Pomerleau , R. Siegwart , V. Hlavac , T. Svoboda , T. Petrickek , M. Reinstein , K. Zimmerman , F. Pirri , M. Gianni , P. Papadakis , A. Sinha , B. Patrick , N. Tomatis , R. Worst , T. Linder , H. Surmann and V. Tretyakov , \u201cExperience in System Design for Human-Robot Teaming in Urban Search & Rescue,\u201d Proceedings of the International Conference on Field and Service Robotics (2012).","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-40686-7_8"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref14","unstructured":"L. Matthies and A. Rankin , \u201cNegative Obstacle Detection by Thermal Signature,\u201d IEEE\/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (2003)."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref16","unstructured":"P. Papadakis and F. Pirri , \u201c3D Mobility Learning and Regression of Articulated, Tracked Robotic Vehicles by Physics-Based Optimization,\u201d In: Virtual Reality Interaction and Physical Simulation (2012) pp. 147\u2013156."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref12","volume-title":"Technical Report","author":"Larson","year":"2010"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref17","unstructured":"P. Papadakis , Content-Based 3D Model Retrieval Considering the User's Relevance Feedback. PhD Thesis (University of Athens, Athens Greece, 2009)."},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.patcog.2006.12.026"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/0734-189X(85)90016-7"},{"key":"S0263574713000349_ref5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"C. Dima , N. Vandapel and M. Hebert , \u201cClassifier Fusion for Outdoor Obstacle Detection,\u201d Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (2004).","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.2004.1307225"}],"container-title":["Robotica"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/services\/aop-cambridge-core\/content\/view\/S0263574713000349","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2019,4,23]],"date-time":"2019-04-23T19:36:02Z","timestamp":1556048162000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/product\/identifier\/S0263574713000349\/type\/journal_article"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2013,5,14]]},"references-count":20,"journal-issue":{"issue":"7","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2013,10]]}},"alternative-id":["S0263574713000349"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1017\/s0263574713000349","relation":{},"ISSN":["0263-5747","1469-8668"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0263-5747","type":"print"},{"value":"1469-8668","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2013,5,14]]}}}