An Analytic Model for Negative Obstacle Detection with Lidar and Numerical Validation Using Physics-Based Simulation.

Negative obstacles have long been a challenging aspect of autonomous navigation for ground vehicles. However, as terrestrial lidar sensors have become lighter and less costly, they have increasingly been deployed on small, low-flying UAV, affording an opportunity to use these sensors to aid in autonomous navigation. In this work, we develop an analytical model for predicting the ability of UAV or UGV mounted lidar sensors to detect negative obstacles.