A Multi-Camera View Direction Planning Strategy for Mobile Robots

A multi-camera view direction planning strategy for mobile robots is discussed. Two concurrent tasks for efficient and safe locomotion in dynamic environments are considered: self-localization and dynamic object tracking. The approach is to assign different tasks to different cameras, such that for each task an individual optimal view direction is selected based on information gain maximization. Thereby, the individual task performance is improved significantly. The performance of the proposed strategy is evaluated in simulations considering a humanoid robot navigation scenario and compared with two conventional multi-camera view direction planning strategies.

[1]  Nobuyuki Kita,et al.  3D simultaneous localisation and map-building using active vision for a robot moving on undulating terrain , 2001, Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition. CVPR 2001.

[2]  M. Buss,et al.  A view direction planning strategy for a multi-camera vision system , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Information and Automation.

[3]  Martin Buss,et al.  A multi-focal high-performance vision system , 2006, Proceedings 2006 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2006. ICRA 2006..

[4]  Vincenzo Lippiello,et al.  Robust visual tracking using a fixed multi-camera system , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[5]  Tingting Xu,et al.  Looking at the surprise: Bottom-up attentional control of an active camera system , 2008, 2008 10th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision.

[6]  J. Krumm,et al.  Multi-camera multi-person tracking for EasyLiving , 2000, Proceedings Third IEEE International Workshop on Visual Surveillance.

[7]  Kolja Kuhnlenz,et al.  Aspects of Multi-Focal Vision , 2007 .

[8]  Uwe D. Hanebeck,et al.  Perception errors in vision guided walking: analysis, modeling, and filtering , 2002, Proceedings 2002 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.02CH37292).

[9]  Günther Schmidt,et al.  Intelligent gaze control for vision-guided humanoid walking: methodological aspects , 2004, Robotics Auton. Syst..

[10]  E. D. Dickmanns,et al.  EMS-vision: gaze control in autonomous vehicles , 2000, Proceedings of the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium 2000 (Cat. No.00TH8511).

[11]  Frank P. Ferrie,et al.  Viewpoint selection by navigation through entropy maps , 1999, Proceedings of the Seventh IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision.

[12]  H. Yanco,et al.  Camera Placement and Multi-Camera Fusion for Remote Robot Operation , 2006 .

[13]  James J. Clark,et al.  Collaborative Multi-Camera Surveillance with Automated Person Detection , 2006, The 3rd Canadian Conference on Computer and Robot Vision (CRV'06).

[14]  Tingting Xu,et al.  The autonomous city explorer project: aims and system overview , 2007, 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems.