3D time-of-flight cameras for mobile robotics

Abstract

Recently developed 3D time-of-flight cameras have an enormous potential for mobile robotic applications in particular for mapping and navigation tasks. This paper presents a new approach for online adaptation of different camera parameters to environment dynamics. These adaptations allow the usage of state-of-the-art 3D cameras reliably in real world environments and enable capturing of 3D scenes with up to 30 frames per second. The performance of the approach is evaluated with respect to different robotic specific tasks in changing environments. A video, showing the performance of the approach, is available at (S. May, et al., 2006)