Autonomous Space Robotics Lab

Devon Island
Rover Navigation Dataset

Rover traverse data

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Stereo imagery, sun vectors, and inclinometer data were collected over a ten-kilometer traverse starting and ending at the Haughton-Mars Research Station on Devon Island. The data collection platform was a pushcart outfitted with typical rover engineering sensors---a Point Grey Research Bumblebee XB3 stereo camera, a Honeywell HMR-3000 inclinometer, and a Sinclair Interplanetary SS-411 digital sun sensor. For ground-truth position, a pair of Magellan ProMark3 GPS units were used to produce post-processed differential GPS data for the whole traverse. The data is partitioned into 23 sections. At the start of each section, a batch of sun vectors and inclinometer readings, together with global position from GPS, were used to estimate the rotation between the sun sensor frame and the topocentric frame. This estimate provides platform orientation at the start of each subsequence, allowing motion estimates to be easily compared to ground-truth data provided by the GPS.

The rover platform travels ten kilometers over this traverse, starting at 10:00am near the Haughton-Mars Project Research Station and returning in a large loop to the start by 6:00pm. The traverse passes through many areas exhibiting the unique, vegetation-free, planetary-analogue terrain that Devon Island is known for---rocky canyons, boulder fields, sandy flats, and significant topographic relief. When collecting the data, every effort was made to ensure that a minimum of man-made objects were in view of the camera. The resulting images, coupled with data from the other sensors and excellent ground-truth position information, make a truly unique dataset relevant both to the mobile robotics and planetary exploration researchers.

The platform shown on the above was used to collect the rover traverse data. Frames associated with the platform are shown on the bottom figure.

Frame transformations

There are six frames of interest in this dataset:

Transformation	x [m]	y [m]	z [m]	a1	a2	a3	r [rad]
Tsz	0.18	-0.09	0.00	-0.013	-0.005	-0.999	1.56
Tsc	0.21	-0.17	-0.09	-0.015	-0.790	0.612	-3.11
Tcr	0.24	0.00	0.00	1.000	0.000	0.000	0.00
	0.20	-0.12	-0.03	-	-	-	-

Timestamp format

Timestamps in the log files are stored in ISO 8601 format. The first image of the stereo sequence has the following timestamp:

        2008-07-12T09:59:41.812500-05:00
        ---- -- -- -- -- --------- -----
        |    |  |  |  |  |         |
Year   --    |  |  |  |  |         |
Month  -------  |  |  |  |         |
Day    ----------  |  |  |         |
Hour   -------------  |  |         |
Minute ----------------  |         |
Seconds-------------------         |
Time-zone offset--------------------

Images

1. Unrectified, color images at 1280x960 resolution
2. Rectified, color images at 1280x960 resolution
3. Rectified, greyscale images at 512x384 resolution.

We have provided the rectification lookup tables in the file RectificationLUTs.zip. Each camera has two files lut-{left,right}-x.txt and lut-{left,right}-y.txt. These are space-seperated ASCII files containing the two-dimensional x and y lookup tables for rectification (L_x and L_y) such that:

Log file formats

image-times.txt

known-orientations.txt

inclinometer.txt

inclinometer-sampled.txt

sun-sensor.txt

sun-sensor-sampled.txt

gps-latlngele.txt

gps-latlngele-sampled.txt

gps-utm.txt

gps-topocentric.txt

The following tools are provided for the convenience of dataset users.

Matlab Scripts

• axisAngle2Dcm.m - Convert an axis and rotation angle into a rotation matrix.
• dcm2AxisAngle.m - Convert a rotation matrix into an axis and rotation angle.
• crossMx.m - The skew-symmetric matrix that may be used to implement the cross product.
• deg2rad.m - Converts degrees to radians.
• rad2deg.m - Converts radians to degrees.
• datenumToIsoTimeString.m - Converts a matlab datenum into an ISO time string.
• getIsoTimeStringRegexp.m - Provides a regular expression that may be used to match an ISO time string
• isoTimeStringToDatenum.m - Converts an ISO time string into a matlab datenum
• readGpsLatLngEle.m - Reads the GPS latitude/longitude/elevation file.
• readGpsLatLngEleSampled.m - Reads the sampled GPS latitude/longitude/elevation file.
• readGpsUTM.m - Reads the GPS latitude/longitude/elevation file.
• readGpsTopocentric.m - Reads the GPS topocentric file.
• readImageTimes.m - Reads the image times file.
• readInclinometer.m - Reads the raw inclinometer data file.
• readInclinometerSampled.m - Reads the sampled inclinometer data file.
• readKnownOrientations.m - Reads the file of known orientations.
• readSunSensor.m - Reads the sun sensor raw data file.
• readSunSensorSampled.m - Reads the sampled sun sensor data file
• plotMotionEstimateVsGps.m - Plots a motion estimate against GPS.
• readRectificationLuts.m - Read the rectification look up tables.
• rectifyImage.m - Rectify an image using the rectification look up tables.
• getInterSensorTransformation.m - Build the 4x4 inter-sensor transformation between any pair of sensors.

Important note: The dataset provides ftp download links. Some browsers no longer enable ftp links by default and you need to change the settings if you want to download using the browser. Using the wget command is an alternative to avoid the browser.

Log files

Images

High-resolution video previews
Subsequence	Start image	End image	Download link
0	1	2087	sequence-00.mpg [167 MB]
1	2088	4488	sequence-01.mpg [192 MB]
2	4489	7451	sequence-02.mpg [237 MB]
3	7452	10207	sequence-03.mpg [220 MB]
4	10208	12265	sequence-04.mpg [165 MB]
5	12266	14996	sequence-05.mpg [215 MB]
6	14997	17625	sequence-06.mpg [206 MB]
7	17626	19789	sequence-07.mpg [173 MB]
8	19790	21508	sequence-08.mpg [138 MB]
9	21509	23802	sequence-09.mpg [182 MB]
10	23803	26633	sequence-10.mpg [226 MB]
11	26634	28568	sequence-11.mpg [154 MB]
12	28569	31334	sequence-12.mpg [221 MB]
13	31335	33806	sequence-13.mpg [198 MB]
14	33807	36016	sequence-14.mpg [177 MB]
15	36017	38795	sequence-15.mpg [222 MB]
16	38796	41317	sequence-16.mpg [202 MB]
17	41318	43418	sequence-17.mpg [168 MB]
18	43419	45112	sequence-18.mpg [135 MB]
19	45113	46680	sequence-19.mpg [125 MB]
20	46681	48123	sequence-20.mpg [108 MB]
21	48124	48977	sequence-21.mpg [59 MB]
22	48978	49410	sequence-22.mpg [32 MB]