Probabilistic Height Grid Terrain Mapping for Mining Shovels using LiDAR

Rope shovels are used to extract and load overburden and ore from blasted terrain. Automating shovel operation is expected to provide numerous economic and environmental benefits. Making autonomous decisions requires a perception system to construct and develop an accurate representation of the workspace. The perception tasks typically include end-effector tracking for collision avoidance, identifying other agents in the workspace, such as haul trucks and clean-up equipment, and generating a map of the environment. The quality of the inputs influences the optimality of the subsequent decision-making processes. In this paper,we focus on generatinga terrainmap usinga shovel-mounted 3D Light Detection and Ranging(LiDAR) Figure 1. A terrain map generated using the proposed approach sensor.