Computationally Efficient Path-Following using Adaptive Color Models

The ability to follow man-made paths and roads is an important capability for a number of robotic tasks. To operate in outdoor environments designed for humans, autonomous robots must identify footpaths, and drive along them. In this paper, we describe a computationally efficient approach to identifying and following footpaths, using only a single camera. Our technique takes the robot's kinematics into consideration when planning the best trajectory to follow the path that it is on. We show that our approach is highly robust to visual artifacts such as shadows, lighting changes, ground texture changes, and occlusions.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICAI
• Authors: Stuart Glaser, Eitan Marder-Eppstein, William Smart
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Ground Texture Changes, ICAI 2008, Important Capability, Man-made Paths