Robot Guidance Using Machine Vision Techniques in Industrial Environments: A Comparative Review

Abstract

In the factory of the future, most of the operations will be done by autonomous robots that need visual feedback to move around the working space avoiding obstacles, to work collaboratively with humans, to identify and locate the working parts, to complete the information provided by other sensors to improve their positioning accuracy, etc. Different vision techniques, such as photogrammetry, stereo vision, structured light, time of flight and laser triangulation, among others, are widely used for inspection and quality control processes in the industry and now for robot guidance. Choosing which type of vision system to use is highly dependent on the parts that need to be located or measured. Thus, in this paper a comparative review of different machine vision techniques for robot guidance is presented. This work analyzes accuracy, range and weight of the sensors, safety, processing time and environmental influences. Researchers and developers can take it as a background information for their future works.

Design tool for TOF and SL based 3D cameras

“…We can divide this field into two groups of techniques, namely Structured Light (SL), where the distance information is recovered through triangulation, and Time of Flight (TOF) techniques, where the distance information is recovered through the measurement of travel time for a light pulse [1].…”

Mobile Robot for Exploration and Manipulation Inside a Nuclear Power Plant

“…This is accomplished by using a method of machine vision to create two and three dimensional maps. An overview of the machine vision technologies is given in [12]. Multiple of these technologies are also already described in use cases similar to the ones at the EnRicH 2017 [2].…”

INSPEX: Design and integration of a portable/wearable smart spatial exploration system

“…Much of the research activity in the area of wearable/portable obstacle detection has been done in the context of assistive technology for the VIB community [9,10] and disabled people [14], drones [11,12] and robotics [13]. However, no solution offers the various conditions functionality with the size, weight and power consumption consistent with a portable/wearable device.…”