A Real-time Computer Vision Platform for Mobile Robot Applications

Abstract A portable platform is described that supports real-time computer vision applications for mobile robots. This platform includes conventional processors, an image processing front-end system, and a controller for a pan/tilt/vergence head. The platform is ruggedized to withstand vibration during off-road driving. The platform has successfully supported experiments in video stabilization and detection of moving objects for outdoor surveillance, gradient-based and correlation-based image flow estimators, and indoor mobility using divergence of flow. These applications have been able to run at rates ranging from 3 to 15 Hz for image sizes from 64 × 64 to 256 × 256.

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