Surface modelling and surface following for robots equipped with range sensors

Abstract

The construction of surface models from sensor data is an important part of perceptive robotics. When the sensor data are obtained from fixed sensors, the problem of occlusion arises. To overcome occlusion, sensors may be mounted on a robot that moves the sensors over the surface. In this thesis the sensors are single-point range finders. The range finders provide a set of sensor points, that is, the surface points detected by the sensors. The sets of sensor points obtained during the robot's motion are used to construct a surface model. The surface model is used in turn in the computation of the robot's motion, so surface modelling is performed on-line, that is, the surface model is constructed incrementally from the sensor points as they are obtained. A planar polyhedral surface model is used that is amenable to incremental surface modelling. The surface model consists of a set of model segments, where a neighbour relation allows model segments to share edges. Also sets of adjacent ...