Novel UWB Synthetic Aperture Radar Imaging for Mobile Robot Mapping

Traditional exteroceptive sensors in mobile robots, such as LiDARs and cameras often struggle to perceive the environment in poor visibility conditions. Recently, radar technologies, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) have emerged as potential alternatives due to their ability to see through adverse environmental conditions (e.g. dust, smoke and rain). However, due to the small apertures with low directivity, the UWB radars cannot reconstruct a detailed image of its field of view (FOV) using a single scan. Hence, a virtual large aperture is synthesized by moving the radar along a mobile robot path. The resulting synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image is a high-definition representation of the surrounding environment. Hence, this paper proposes a pipeline for mobile robots to incorporate UWB radar-based SAR imaging to map an unknown environment. Finally, we evaluated the performance of classical feature detectors: SIFT, SURF, BRISK, AKAZE and ORB to identify loop closures using UWB SAR images. The experiments were conducted emulating adverse environmental conditions. The results demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of UWB SAR imaging for high-resolution environmental mapping and loop closure detection toward more robust and reliable robotic perception systems.