The spherical laser scanner is used in Carnegie Mellon's Dante Explorer, an eight-legged walking robot, to generate terrain information surrounding the robot. This terrain information is used for two purposes. First, the data is used in a 3-D graphical user interface to provide information about terrain geometry under and around Dante for teleoperation and monitoring purposes. Second, the terrain data is used to autonomously determine leg lift height, body clearance height, and body attitude for traversing uneven and boulder strewn terrain. The figures below show data acquired from the scanner during Dante's mission to Mount Erebus, Antarctica.
Brighter points are farther away from the sensor.
Other applications can benefit from the use of this sensor. Omni-directional robots, in particular, benefit from the terrain information provided by the scanner. Their mobility is no longer constrained by the limited knowledge of the environment provided by traditional narrow field of view sensors. In addition to terrain mapping, the spherical laser scanner can be used for safeguarding a mobile robot. Traditional safeguarding sensors suffer from blind spots, or are only able to detect objects at a certain height.