Document Type

Article

Keywords

Mobile Robots, Navigation, Mapping, Landmarks, Sensor Fusion

Disciplines

Computer Engineering | Robotics

Abstract

A team of robots working to explore and map a space may need to share information about landmarks so as register local maps and to plan effective exploration strategies. In this paper we investigate the use of spatial histograms (spatiograms) as a common representation for exchanging landmark information between robots. Each robot can use sonar, stereo, laser and image information to identify potential landmarks. The sonar, laser and stereo information provide the spatial dimension of the spatiogram in a landmark-centered coordinate frame while video provides the image information. We call the result a terrain spatiogram. This representation can be shared between robots in a team to recognize landmarks and to fuse observations from multiple sensors or multiple platforms. We report experimental results sharing indoor and outdoor landmark information between a two different models of robot equipped with differently configured stereocameras and show that the terrain spatiogram (1) allows the robots to recognize landmarks seen only by the other with high confidence and, (2) allows multiple views of a landmark to be fused in a useful fashion.

Article Number

1018

Publication Date

3-2009

Comments

SPIE Defense and Security Symposium, March 2009, Orlando (Kissimmee), FL

This research was conducted at the Fordham University Robotics and Computer Vision Lab. For more information about graduate programs in Computer Science, see http://www.cis.fordham.edu/graduate.html, and the Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, see http://www.fordham.edu/gsas.

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