Visual navigation and control of a mobile robot
As cameras become cheaper and better, using them as sensors have become increasingly more common. This is especially true in robotics and for autonomous robot navigation. This thesis suggests a method where inputs from a single camera are used for making a robot self driving. The robot is assumed to move along planar surfaces, common in indoor environments. The method is based on matching image features to a prebuilt navigation map also made up of image features. The method is evaluated by making a successful implementation on a mobile robot. Since a camera is the only input, it proves that the quality of the camera is of high importance. All cameras in motion suffer from distortion. It is referred to as motion blur and arises when the scene changes during the recording of a single exposure. To try and exploit that cameras are cheap, it is investigated if a simple USB camera is sufficient for the method. It proves to be, but to keep the motion blur low, the maximum velocity of the robot is heavily limited. (Less)