WetExplorer: Automating Wetland Greenhouse-Gas Surveys with an Autonomous Mobile Robot

TL;DR

WetExplorer is an autonomous robot that automates greenhouse-gas sampling in wetlands, significantly reducing manual effort and enabling high-frequency, multi-site measurements for climate research.

Contribution

This paper introduces WetExplorer, a novel autonomous robot system that automates GHG sampling in wetlands using advanced localization, perception, and planning techniques.

Findings

Localization error of 1.71 cm in outdoor trials

Object pose estimation with 7 mm and 3° accuracy

Sampling chamber positioning within 70 mm tolerance without human intervention

Abstract

Quantifying greenhouse-gases (GHG) in wetlands is critical for climate modeling and restoration assessment, yet manual sampling is labor-intensive, and time demanding. We present WetExplorer, an autonomous tracked robot that automates the full GHG-sampling workflow. The robot system integrates low-ground-pressure locomotion, centimeter-accurate lift placement, dual-RTK sensor fusion, obstacle avoidance planning, and deep-learning perception in a containerized ROS2 stack. Outdoor trials verified that the sensor-fusion stack maintains a mean localization error of 1.71 cm, the vision module estimates object pose with 7 mm translational and 3{\deg} rotational accuracy, while indoor trials demonstrated that the full motion-planning pipeline positions the sampling chamber within a global tolerance of 70 mm while avoiding obstacles, all without human intervention. By eliminating the manual bottleneck, WetExplorer enables high-frequency, multi-site GHG measurements and opens the door for dense, long-duration datasets in saturated wetland terrain.