TERRAIN DATA BASE GENERATION 
FOR 
AUTONOMOUS LAND VEHICLE NAVIGATION 
Daniel L. Edwards, Michael W. Schoppmann, and Gregory B. Desmond 
U.S. Army Engineer Topographic Laboratories 
Ft. Belvoir, VA 22060-5546 
Abstract 
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Strategic Comput- 
ing Program is a large, multi-year effort focused on developing the next 
generation of computers and machine intelligence. Within this program 
the Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV) Project calls for the development and 
demonstration of increasingly sophisticated autonomous land navigation 
capabilities. As part of this effort, the U.S. Army Engineer Topographic 
Laboratories (USAETL) has the task of producing a high resolution, high 
accuracy experimental digital terrain data base of a 16 square kilometer 
test site. This data base will be used in conjunction with an inertial 
navigation system within the ALV. The data base will initially consist 
of six overlays including landforms, soils, surface drainage, land 
cover, roads, and a digital elevation model (DEM) at five meter spacing. 
Data on obstacles, control points, and mobility will be added later. ALV 
applications of the terrain data base include premission route planning, 
operational context, and a priori information for machine vision. It is 
expected that ALV experiments will lead to future data base revisions. 
Compilation of this data base is being performed on the Computer- 
Assisted Photo Interpretation Research (CAPIR) system at USAETL.  CAPIR 
is an ongoing research effort which addresses the issues of digital ter- 
rain data extraction, storage, and exploitation. This integrated system 
consists of an analytical plotter equipped with stereo-superposition 
graphics and a geographic information system to provide the mechanism 
for 3-dimensional data capture, verification and management. This paper 
will address data requirements and systems for building terrain data 
bases in support of experimental autonomous land vehicle navigation. 
Background 
The Strategic Computing Program is a large, multi-year Defense Advanced 
Research Projects Agency initiative devoted to developing the next gen- 
eration of computers and machine intelligence. Within this program the 
Autonomous Land Vehicle (ALV) Project focuses on the development and 
demonstration of increasingly sophisticated autonomous land navigation 
capabilities. The vehicle has an eight-wheeled undercarriage covered by 
an air-tight fiberglass shell large enough to house on-board computers, 
sensors, power, and air conditioning. It's primary function is to pro- 
vide a testbed for integration and demonstration of Strategic Computing 
Program technologies. 
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