BADGR: the Berkeley autonomous driving ground robot

Look at the images above. If I asked you to bring me a picnic blanket in the grassy field, would you be able to? If I asked you to bring over a cart full of food for a party, would you push the cart along the paved path or on the grass? Prior navigation approaches based purely on geometric reasoning incorrectly think that tall grass is an obstacle (above) and don't understand the difference between a smooth paved path and bumpy grass (below). While the answers to these questions may seem obvious, today's mobile robots would likely fail at these tasks: they would think the tall grass is the same as a concrete wall, and wouldn't know the difference between a smooth path and bumpy grass.