arXiv:2608.27628cs.RO2026-08

在北极林区部署机器人一年,发现传统导航方法在雪地和季节变化下失效。

One year in a forest: Analyzing the challenges of autonomous navigation in subarctic environments

论文配图:One year in a forest: Analyzing the challenges of autonomous navigation in subarctic environments
图 1 · 摘自论文原文
  • 用9种算法在林区跑64公里,测试全年导航表现
  • 视觉SLAM受季节影响大,雪堆和重复场景导致定位漂移
  • 雷达和激光方案跨季定位更稳定,适合长期自主作业

亚北极地区有望在林业、采矿和环境监测中广泛应用自主机器人。然而,密集树冠和大气衰减使依赖GNSS或云端计算的系统不可靠,需依靠车载传感器与本地处理。现有外感知技术(如相机、激光雷达、雷达)通常在结构化城市环境或无显著季节变化的场景中评估。为此,我们报告了一辆移动机器人在亚北极针叶林中为期一年的实地部署。通过分析64公里数据,评估了九种里程计、定位与建图方法在四季变化下的性能。结果表明,环境变化显著削弱主流技术表现,尤其在自相似场景或高雪堆条件下更为脆弱。复杂SLAM算法虽略有精度提升,但大幅增加系统脆弱性。通过关联位置漂移与特征及置信度分布,发现视觉SLAM受季节变化影响最严重。此外,我们在先验地图上测试跨季定位任务:激光雷达方法成功完成跨季定位,而雷达和视觉方法因匹配特征过少而频繁失败,即使同季节也如此。最后,我们总结了此次长达一年试验中的挑战与经验,包括使用雷达和激光雷达管道进行多季节“教学与重复”(T&R)评估。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Subarctic regions have the potential to see increased deployment of autonomous robots in applications including forestry, mining, and environmental monitoring. In these conditions, an autonomous system's reliance on GNSS or cloud computing is precarious due to dense tree canopies and atmospheric attenuation, necessitating onboard sensing and data processing. However, established exteroceptive modalities, including cameras, lidars, and radars, are typically evaluated in structured urban settings or in environments that lack significant seasonal variations. To address this, we present a field report on a year-long deployment of a mobile robot in a subarctic boreal forest. We evaluate 64 km of data using nine odometry, localization, and mapping methods and assess their performance across seasonal changes. The performed experiments suggest that the environment changes significantly hinder the performance of state-of-the-art techniques, which show increased fragility when subject to conditions characterized by self-similar scenes or tall snowbanks. Additionally, complex Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) algorithms offer limited accuracy gains over a proprioceptive baseline while significantly increasing system fragility. Furthermore, by correlating the position drift with features and confidence weight distribution, we show that visual-based SLAM methods are particularly affected by the seasonal changes. Additionally, we investigate the task of cross-season localization in a prior map. While lidar-based methods successfully completed localization runs between seasons, radar and visual methods are prone to failure due to a few matching features between runs, even within the same season. Finally, we detail the challenges and lessons learned from this year-long trial, including a multi-season Teach and Repeat (T&R) evaluation using both radar and lidar-based pipelines.

自主导航季节变化视觉SLAM激光雷达

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