Visual servoing of mobile robots using non-central catadioptric cameras

Abstract

This paper presents novel contributions on image-based control of a mobile robot using a general catadioptric camera model. A catadioptric camera is usually made up by a combination of a conventional camera and a curved mirror resulting on an omnidirectional sensor capable of providing 360 o panoramic views of a scene. Modeling such cameras has been subject of significant research interest in the computer vision community leading to a deeper understanding of the image properties and also to different models for different types of configurations. Visual servoing applications using catadioptric cameras have essentially been using central cameras and the corresponding unified projection model. So far only in a few cases more general models have been used. In this paper we address the problem of visual servoing using so-called radial model. The radial model can be applied to many camera configurations and in particular to non-central catadioptric systems with mirrors that are symmetric around an axis coinciding with the optical axis. In this case, we show that the radial model can be used with a non-central catadioptric camera to allow effective image-based visual servoing (IBVS) of a mobile robot. Using this model, which is valid for a large set of catadioptric cameras (central or non-central), new visual features are proposed to control the degrees of freedom of a mobile robot moving on a plane. In addition to several simulation results, a set of experiments was carried out on Robot Operating System (ROS)based platform which validates the applicability, effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method for imaged-based control of a non-holonomic robot.

Localization and Mapping Using a Non-Central Catadioptric Camera System

“…However the initial and the main step in those studies focused on removing the image distortion caused by the shape of the mirror. The solutions for navigation and mapping using catadioptric cameras can be broadly divided into two categories: a) solutions based on ray optics geometry (Geyer and Daniilidis, 2000;Micusik and Pajdla, 2004;Aliakbarpour et al, 2014;Tommaselli et al, 2014) and b) solutions based on image unwrapping generated from geometric conditions (Aliaga, 2001;Geyer and Daniilidis, 1999). Solutions based on ray-optics use the physical geometry of the catadioptric system, the mirror shape and reflection equations to obtain the respective image coordinates of a physical point (in the object space) observed in the image.…”

Estimating the position and orientation of a mobile robot with respect to a trajectory using omnidirectional imaging and global appearance

“…Among them, catadioptric systems use external mirrors to widen the field of view of the camera. Some researchers have made use of the projection model of such systems to control the robot motion, as in [ 2 ] and [ 3 ], where a general catadioptric camera model is used to solve efficiently the problem of visual servoing of mobile robots.…”

A Low Cost Single Board Computer Based Mobile Robot Motion Planning System for Indoor Environments

“…They are mounted to the mobile robots and communicated with the mobile robot and other devices such as sensors and cameras using different communication interfaces [26]. In literature, laptops, notebooks, on-board PCs or PCs are used in the most of the studies on the mobile robots [15,[20][21]23], [27][28][29][30][31][32]. These devices increase the cost of the mobile robot systems.…”

“…This saved us from unnecessary cable cost and complexity of the working environment. Some studies in literature used PC controlled robots with long cables [29]. The mobile robot systems with bigger and heavier devices on top or long cables for communication are not realistic solutions for real life.…”