An Embedded Multi-camera System for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

This paper presents an embedded multi-camera system for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) for mobile robots. The multi-camera system has been designed and implemented as a SoC (System-on-a-Chip), using reconfigurable computing technology. In this system the images are captured in real-time by means of four CMOS digital cameras. After some pre-processing steps, those images are sent to an embedded softcore processor by a direct memory access (DMA) channel. In this system, images are captured, pre-processed and sent to the embedded processor at 30 frames per second in color mode and 60 frames per second in gray-scale mode. This paper also shows the main advantages of using multi-cameras to implement SLAM based on the Extended Kalman Filter.

[1]  Thomas Bräunl.  Embedded robotics - mobile robot design and applications with embedded systems (2. ed.) , 2003 .

[2]  João M. P. Cardoso,et al.  A Real Time Gesture Recognition System for Mobile Robots , 2004, ICINCO.

[3]  Wayne H. Wolf,et al.  Smart Cameras as Embedded Systems , 2002, Computer.

[4]  Ki-Sang Hong,et al.  Vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping with two cameras , 2005, 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.

[5]  Zvonko G. Vranesic,et al.  Fundamentals of Digital Logic with VHDL Design , 2008 .

[6]  Pavel Zemcík.  Hardware acceleration of graphics and imaging algorithms using FPGAs , 2002, SCCG '02.

[7]  Peter C. Cheeseman,et al.  Estimating uncertain spatial relationships in robotics , 1986, Proceedings. 1987 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[8]  Sofiène Tahar,et al.  A survey on system-on-a-chip design languages , 2003, The 3rd IEEE International Workshop on System-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications, 2003. Proceedings..