3-D world modeling based on combinatorial geometry for autonomous robot navigation

In applications of robotics to surveillance and mapping at nuclear facilities the scene to be described is three-dimensional. Using range data a 3-D model of the environment can be built. First, each measured point on the object surface is surrounded by a solid sphere with a radius determined by the range to that point. Then the 3-D shapes of the visible surfaces are obtained by taking the (Boolean) union of the spheres. Using this representation distances to boundary surfaces can be efficiently calculated. This feature is particularly useful for navigation purposes. The efficiency of the proposed approach is illustrated by a simulation of a spherical robot navigating in a 3-D room with static obstacles.

[1]  Hans P. Moravec.  Rover Visual Obstacle Avoidance , 1981, IJCAI.

[2]  H.-H. Nagel,et al.  Representation of Moving Rigid Objects Based on Visual Observations , 1981, Computer.

[3]  H. W. Harvey,et al.  Surveillance robot for nuclear power plants , 1985 .

[4]  H. W. Harvey,et al.  Testing of mobile surveillance robot at a nuclear power plant , 1987, Proceedings. 1987 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[5]  Rida T. Farouki,et al.  A Hierarchy of Geometric Forms , 1985, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[6]  Wayne Tiller,et al.  Rational B-Splines for Curve and Surface Representation , 1983, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[7]  Jake K. Aggarwal,et al.  Determining motion parameters using intensity guided range sensing , 1986, Pattern Recognit..

[8]  Thomas W. Sederberg,et al.  Steiner Surface Patches , 1985, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[9]  Richard O. Duda,et al.  Pattern classification and scene analysis , 1974, A Wiley-Interscience publication.

[10]  G. M. Taylor.  Remote handling systems help TMI-2 cleanup efforts , 1984 .

[11]  Martial Hebert,et al.  Outdoor scene analysis using range data , 1986, Proceedings. 1986 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  R. Woodham,et al.  Determining the movement of objects from a sequence of images , 1980, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence.