Route description by 3D objects in panoramic representation

摘要

Abstract Finding landmarks autonomously for guiding longdistance navigation by a mobile robot is explored. In a trial navigation, the robot continuously views and memorizes scenes along the route. When the same route is subsequently pursued again, the robot locates and orients itself based on the memorized scene. Since the stream of images is highly redundant, it is transformed into an intermediate 2(1/2)D representation, called panoramic representation, with much less data. Although the panoramic representation can be used for guidance of the autonomous navigation, it still contains a huge amount of data for a very long route. A human memorizes only very imposing objects along the route such as an old church or a very high tower, and uses them as landmarks. The author's robot also finds distinctive objects along the route and memorizes their features as well as spatial relationships for navigation guidance. The 3D objects along the route are segmented in the panoramic representation by fusing range estimates and color attributes, and then a structure map representing their arrangement in space is yielded. To find distinctive objects used for the landmarks, the spatial relationships, shapes and color attributes of the objects are examined.