Vision-Based Obstacle Detection and Avoidance: Application to Robust Indoor Navigation of Mobile Robots

Authors: Yoon, Sukjune¹; Shik Roh, Kyung²; Shim, Youngbo²

Source: Advanced Robotics, Volume 22, Number 4, 2008 , pp. 477-492(16)

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $35.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

We propose a more practical and efficient method for obstacle detection and avoidance. In this paper, a robot detects obstacles based on the projective invariants of stereo cameras, fuses this information with two-dimensional scanning sensor data, and finally builds up a more informative and conservative occupancy map. Although this approach is not supposed to recognize the exact shape of the obstacles, this shortcoming is overcome in the actual application by its fast calculation time and robustness against the illumination conditions. To avoid detected obstacles, a new reactive obstacle avoidance strategy is also presented. To evaluate the proposed method, we applied it to the mobile robot iMARO-III. In this test, iMARO-III has succeeded in long-term operation for 7 days continuously without any intervention of engineers and any collision in the real office environment.

Keywords: OBSTACLE DETECTION; OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE; PROJECTIVE INVARIANTS; MOBILE ROBOT NAVIGATION

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156855308X10.1163/156855308X294699

Affiliations: 1: Fundamental Technology Team, Mechatronics & Manufacturing Center, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, 416, Maetan-3 Dong, Yeongtong-Gu, Suwon-City, Gyeonggi-Do 443-742, South Korea;, Email: yoon@samsung.com 2: Fundamental Technology Team, Mechatronics & Manufacturing Center, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd, 416, Maetan-3 Dong, Yeongtong-Gu, Suwon-City, Gyeonggi-Do 443-742, South Korea

Publication date: 2008-04-01