A Robust Visual Odometry and Precipice Detection System Using Consumer-grade Monocular Vision

– We describe a monocular robot vision system which accomplishes accurate 3-DOF dead-reckoning, closedloop motion control, and precipice and obstacle detection, all in dynamic environments, using a single, consumer-grade webcam and typical laptop computer hardware. Simultaneous translation and rotation are accurately measured, and the camera need not be placed at the robot’s center of rotation. The algorithm is straightforward to implement and robust to noisy measurements. The software is based on open source computer vision libraries and is itself open source. It has been tested in a wide variety of real-world environments and on several different mobile robot platforms.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: Jason Campbell, Rahul Sukthankar, Illah R. Nourbakhsh, Aroon Pahwa
• Keywords: Closedloop Motion Control, ICRA 2005, Monocular Robot Vision, Open Source, Robotics