Active visual localisation for cooperating inspection robots

Abstract

In the routine inspection of industrial or other areas, teams of robots with various sensors could operate together to great effect, but require reliable, accurate and flexible localisation capabilities to be able to move around safely. We demonstrate accurate localisation for an inspection team consisting of a robot with stereo active vision and its companion with an active lighting system, and show that in this case a single sensor can be used for measuring the position of known or unknown scene features, measuring the relative location of the two robots, and actually carrying out an inspection task.