Feature Density Based Terrain Hazard Detection for Planetary Landing

To ensure successful future planetary landing mission, the lander must be capable of detecting and assessing terrain hazard in the nominal landing zone. This paper presents an innovative method of planetary terrain hazard detection. The concept of feature density is introduced into the process of terrain hazard detection. Moreover, the statistical information of the terrain feature density is utilized to represent the terrain hazard level. Opposed to other methods of hazard detection, the research in this paper focuses on how to build a unified terrain representation by the terrain features rather than detecting the specific one or several types of hazard obstacles in traditional sense. Computer simulations demonstrates that the method presented in this paper is able to conduct multitype of complex terrain hazard detecting by the terrain feature detected in the visual image obtained from onboard camera during the landing phase.