GUIDANCE OF A MOBILE ROBOT WITH ENVIRONMENTAL MAP USING OMNIDIRECTIONAL IMAGE SENSOR COPIS

We have proposed a new omnidirectional image sensor COPIS (COnic Proje ction Image Sensor) for guiding navigation of a mobile robot. Its feat ure is passive sensing of the omnidirectional image of the environment in real-time (at the frame rate of a TV camera) using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in real world enviro nment with moving objects. This paper describes a method for estimatin g the location and the motion of the robot by detecting the azimuth of each object in the omnidirectional image. In this method, the azimuth is matched with the given environmental map. The robot can always est imate its own location and motion precisely because COPIS observes a 3 60 degree view around the robot even if all edges are not extracted co rrectly from the omnidirectional image. We also present a method to av oid collision against unknown obstacles and estimate their locations b y detecting their azimuth changes while the robot is moving in the env ironment. Using the COPIS system, we performed several experiments in the real world.