Rotation control and motion estimation of camera for road following

Abstract

Presents the fundamental behavior of a compact mobile robot which moves in an outdoor environment. The robot's behavior is actived by the visual pattern of a straight line, such as a road boundary. This behavior makes the robot move along the visual pattern. The behavior is achieved using control of the TV camera direction and estimation of the position where the visual pattern will appear on the image plane. The control of the TV camera direction keeps the visual pattern within the image plane, and the position is estimated by measuring the TV camera motion with internal sensors. This is used for determining the search area on the image plane. Using this behavior, the robot can move along the visual pattern efficiently and robustly. The robot moves freely by selecting the visual patterns. The authors demonstrate its validity by experimental results in a real outdoor environment.