Evaluating effectivity of map generation by tracking vertical edges in omnidirectional image sequence

Abstract

We designed a new omnidirectional image sensor, called COPIS (Conic Projection Image Sensor), to guide the navigation of a mobile robot. The feature of COPIS is passive sensing of the omnidirectional image of the environment, in real-time, using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in a real environment. Under the assumption of the known motion of the robot, an environmental map of an indoor scene is generated by monitoring the azimuth change in the image. We did several experiments in the simple indoor environment. The precision of the obtained environmental maps was sufficient for robot navigation in such environment. In these experiments, to examine the potential of COPIS against the effects of observational errors in real-time navigation, we simplified the image processing method and the experimental environment. In this paper, we improve the image processing method for extracting and tracking vertical edges, taking care of the reliability, and also evaluate the effectiveness of COPIS in a real indoor and outdoor environment.