Omni-directional vision for robot navigation in substation environments

This paper presents a new omni-directional vision based navigation system for mobile robots in substation environments for 24h all-weather inspection. It is featured with near infrared illumination, omni-directional imaging, and artificial landmarks recognition. The extended Kalman filter (EKF) is also used to integrate the measurements from vision and odometer. Experiments have also been carried out to verify the functionalities of the system.

[1]  Takashi Tsubouchi,et al.  Outdoor navigation of a mobile robot between buildings based on DGPS and odometry data fusion , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (Cat. No.03CH37422).

[2]  J.A. Jardini,et al.  Mobile robot for hot spot monitoring in electric power substation , 2008, 2008 IEEE/PES Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exposition.

[3]  Richard A. Brown,et al.  Introduction to random signals and applied kalman filtering (3rd ed , 2012 .

[4]  Naokazu Yokoya,et al.  Memory-based self-localization using omnidirectional images , 2003, Systems and Computers in Japan.

[5]  Hou Xingzhe,et al.  Research on the AGV Based Robot System Used in Substation Inspection , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Power System Technology.

[6]  Lei Han,et al.  A patrol robot for electric power substation , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation.

[7]  Claude Pégard,et al.  A navigation system based on an ominidirectional vision sensor , 1997, Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robot and Systems. Innovative Robotics for Real-World Applications. IROS '97.

[8]  Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte,et al.  A high integrity IMU/GPS navigation loop for autonomous land vehicle applications , 1999, IEEE Trans. Robotics Autom..

[9]  M. Saito,et al.  Network-based RTK-GPS for Nationwide High-accuracy Positioning and Navigation in Japan , 2003 .

[10]  Niancang Hou The infrared thermography diagnostic technique of high-voltage electrical equipments with internal faults , 1998, POWERCON '98. 1998 International Conference on Power System Technology. Proceedings (Cat. No.98EX151).

[11]  Ismet Erkmen,et al.  GPS/INS enhancement using neural networks for autonomous ground vehicle applications , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).