Visibility sensor with stereo infrared light sources for mobile robot motion estimation

Abstract

This paper describes a new sensor system for mobile robot motion estimation using stereo infrared light sources and a camera. Visibility is being applied to robotic obstacle avoidance path planning and localization. Using simple visibility computation, the environment is partitioned into many visibility sectors. Based on the recognized edges, the sector a robot belongs to is identified and this greatly reduces the search area for localization. Geometric modeling of the vision system enables the estimation of the characteristic pixel position with respect to the robot movement. Finite difference analysis is used for incremental movement and the error sources are investigated. With two characteristic points in the image such as vertices, the robot position and orientation are successfully estimated. © ICROS 2011.