{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,30]],"date-time":"2026-09-30T22:30:06Z","timestamp":1790807406004,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":38,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]],"date-time":"2023-10-03T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1696291200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000185","name":"Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000185","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Robot. AI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Navigation over torturous terrain such as those in natural subterranean environments presents a significant challenge to field robots. The diversity of hazards, from large boulders to muddy or even partially submerged Earth, eludes complete definition. The challenge is amplified if the presence and nature of these hazards must be shared among multiple agents that are operating in the same space. Furthermore, highly efficient mapping and robust navigation solutions are absolutely critical to operations such as semi-autonomous search and rescue. We propose an efficient and modular framework for semantic grid mapping of subterranean environments. Our approach encodes occupancy and traversability information, as well as the presence of stairways, into a grid map that is distributed amongst a robot fleet despite bandwidth constraints. We demonstrate that the mapping method enables safe and enduring exploration of subterranean environments. The performance of the system is showcased in high-fidelity simulations, physical experiments, and Team MARBLE\u2019s entry in the DARPA Subterranean Challenge which received third place.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2023.1249586","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]],"date-time":"2023-10-03T07:51:33Z","timestamp":1696319493000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Terrain-aware semantic mapping for cooperative subterranean exploration"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"10","author":[{"given":"Michael J.","family":"Miles","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Harel","family":"Biggie","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Christoffer","family":"Heckman","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7114","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS47612.2022.9982169","article-title":"Efficient sampling-based planning for subterranean exploration","volume-title":"2022 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Ahmad","year":"2022"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"3","DOI":"10.2312\/egtp.19871000","article-title":"A fast voxel traversal algorithm for ray tracing","volume":"87","author":"Amanatides","year":"1987","journal-title":"Eurographics"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"261","DOI":"10.1109\/DCOSS54816.2022.00051","article-title":"Heterogeneous ground-air autonomous vehicle networking in austere environments: practical implementation of a mesh network in the darpa subterranean challenge","volume-title":"2022 18th international conference on distributed computing in sensor systems (DCOSS)","author":"Biggie","year":"2022"},{"key":"B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"125","DOI":"10.55417\/fr.2023004","article-title":"Flexible supervised autonomy for exploration in subterranean environments","volume":"3","author":"Biggie","year":"2023","journal-title":"J. Field Robotics"},{"key":"B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"477","DOI":"10.1146\/annurev-control-062722-100728","article-title":"Into the robotic depths: analysis and insights from the darpa subterranean challenge","volume":"6","author":"Chung","year":"2023","journal-title":"Annu. Rev. Control, Robotics, Aut. Syst."},{"key":"B6","volume-title":"DARPA subterranean challenge","year":"2022"},{"key":"B7","volume-title":"Step: Stochastic traversability evaluation and planning for safe off-road navigation","author":"Fan","year":"2021"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"433","DOI":"10.1142\/9789814623353_0051","article-title":"Robot-centric elevation mapping with uncertainty estimates","volume-title":"Mobile service robotics","author":"Fankhauser","year":"2014"},{"key":"B9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"99","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-26054-9_5","article-title":"A universal grid map library: implementation and use case for rough terrain navigation","volume-title":"Robot operating system (ROS)","author":"Fankhauser","year":"2016"},{"key":"B10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"8138","DOI":"10.1109\/lra.2022.3187278","article-title":"Ga-nav: efficient terrain segmentation for robot navigation in unstructured outdoor environments","volume":"7","author":"Guan","year":"2022","journal-title":"IEEE Robotics Automation Lett."},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"887910","DOI":"10.3389\/frobt.2022.887910","article-title":"Traversability analysis with vision and terrain probing for safe legged robot navigation","volume":"9","author":"Haddeler","year":"2022","journal-title":"Front. Robotics AI"},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2496","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2015.7353716","article-title":"Detection of ascending stairs using stereo vision","volume-title":"2015 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Harms","year":"2015"},{"key":"B13","first-page":"997","article-title":"Terrain mapping for a roving planetary explorer","volume-title":"IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (IEEE)","author":"Hebert","year":"1989"},{"key":"B14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4048","DOI":"10.1109\/lra.2021.3065302","article-title":"Virtual surfaces and attitude aware planning and behaviours for negative obstacle navigation","volume":"6","author":"Hines","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Robotics Automation Lett."},{"key":"B15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"189","DOI":"10.1007\/s10514-012-9321-0","article-title":"Octomap: an efficient probabilistic 3d mapping framework based on octrees","volume":"34","author":"Hornung","year":"2013","journal-title":"Aut. robots"},{"key":"B16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1338","DOI":"10.1177\/0278364919856099","article-title":"Materials that make robots smart","volume":"38","author":"Hughes","year":"2019","journal-title":"Int. J. Robotics Res."},{"key":"B17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"416","DOI":"10.1002\/rob.21831","article-title":"Rtab-map as an open-source lidar and visual simultaneous localization and mapping library for large-scale and long-term online operation","volume":"36","author":"Labb\u00e9","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Field Robotics"},{"key":"B18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2445","DOI":"10.3390\/s21072445","article-title":"Active mapping and robot exploration: A survey","volume":"21","author":"Lluvia","year":"2021","journal-title":"Sensors"},{"key":"B19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"116","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.1985.1087316","article-title":"High resolution maps from wide angle sonar","volume-title":"Proceedings. 1985 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (IEEE)","author":"Moravec","year":"1985"},{"key":"B20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"4073","DOI":"10.1109\/ICRA40945.2020.9197381","article-title":"Reactive control and metric-topological planning for exploration","volume-title":"2020 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA)","author":"Ohradzansky","year":"2020"},{"key":"B21","volume-title":"Multi-agent autonomy: Advancements and challenges in subterranean exploration","author":"Ohradzansky","year":"2021"},{"key":"B22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1366","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2017.8202315","article-title":"Voxblox: incremental 3d euclidean signed distance fields for on-board mav planning","volume-title":"2017 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Oleynikova","year":"2017"},{"key":"B23","volume-title":"DARPA SubT simulator by OSRF","year":"2022"},{"key":"B24","volume-title":"OS1","year":"2023"},{"key":"B25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1289","DOI":"10.1109\/ROBOT.1997.614315","article-title":"Probabilistic octree modeling of a 3d dynamic environment","volume":"2","author":"Payeur","year":"1997","journal-title":"Proc. Int. Conf. Robotics Automation"},{"key":"B26","first-page":"5","article-title":"Ros: an open-source robot operating system","volume-title":"ICRA workshop on open source software (Kobe, Japan)","author":"Quigley","year":"2009"},{"key":"B27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1436","DOI":"10.1002\/rob.21912","article-title":"High-speed mobility on planetary surfaces: A technical review","volume":"36","author":"Rodr\u00edguez-Mart\u00ednez","year":"2019","journal-title":"J. Field Robotics"},{"key":"B28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"10736","DOI":"10.3390\/app112210736","article-title":"Staircase detection, characterization and approach pipeline for search and rescue robots","volume":"11","author":"S\u00e1nchez-Rojas","year":"2021","journal-title":"Appl. Sci."},{"key":"B29","volume-title":"Map analysis","author":"Schang","year":"2021"},{"key":"B30","volume-title":"Metaverse: Meta-learning traversability cost map for off-road navigation","author":"Seo","year":"2023"},{"key":"B31","first-page":"619","article-title":"Semantic terrain classification for off-road autonomous driving","volume-title":"Conference on robot learning","author":"Shaban","year":"2022"},{"key":"B32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5135","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS45743.2020.9341176","article-title":"Lio-sam: tightly-coupled lidar inertial odometry via smoothing and mapping","volume-title":"2020 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Shan","year":"2020"},{"key":"B33","first-page":"829","article-title":"Bayesian generalized kernel inference for terrain traversability mapping","volume-title":"Conference on robot learning","author":"Shan","year":"2018"},{"key":"B34","first-page":"1414","article-title":"Multi-robot area exploration with limited-range communications","volume-title":"2004 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Sheng","year":"2004"},{"key":"B35","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"52","DOI":"10.1145\/504729.504754","article-title":"Probabilistic robotics","volume":"45","author":"Thrun","year":"2002","journal-title":"Commun. ACM"},{"key":"B36","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1463","DOI":"10.1177\/0278364918798039","article-title":"Robust stairway-detection and localization method for mobile robots using a graph-based model and competing initializations","volume":"37","author":"Westfechtel","year":"2018","journal-title":"Int. J. Robotics Res."},{"key":"B37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"473","DOI":"10.1109\/IROS.2016.7759096","article-title":"3d graph based stairway detection and localization for mobile robots","volume-title":"2016 IEEE\/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS)","author":"Westfechtel","year":"2016"},{"key":"B38","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"361","DOI":"10.1109\/tsmcb.2006.883870","article-title":"Navigating a mobile robot by a traversability field histogram","volume":"37","author":"Ye","year":"2007","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Syst. Man, Cybern. Part B Cybern."}],"container-title":["Frontiers in Robotics and AI"],"original-title":[],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frobt.2023.1249586\/full","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]],"date-time":"2023-10-03T07:51:51Z","timestamp":1696319511000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frobt.2023.1249586\/full"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]]},"references-count":38,"alternative-id":["10.3389\/frobt.2023.1249586"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/frobt.2023.1249586","relation":{},"ISSN":["2296-9144"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2296-9144","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2023,10,3]]},"article-number":"1249586"}}