Hierarchical Stereo-based Navigation with Sparse Representation

Vision-based navigation systems with real-time needs often employ hierarchical schemes that break down navigation across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Doing so scales the navigation problem down to real-time realizable problems at the local domains. Such hierarchical architecture often includes environment perception, planning, and control modules, which also lie in three levels from high to low. Leveraging sparse representation for the three modules can reduce the computational cost and have favorable scaling properties across multiple devices. It is important in the context of mobile robot navigation where fast and safe decisions should be made when traversing unknown or partially known environments.