Reactive visual navigation based on omnidirectional sensing-path following and collision avoidance

Described here is a visual navigation method for navigating a mobile robot along a man-made route such as a corridor or a street. We have proposed an image sensor, named HyperOmniVision, with a hyperboloidal mirror for vision based navigation of the mobile robot. This sensing system can acquire an omnidirectional view around the robot in real time. In the case of the man-made route, road boundaries between the ground plane and wall appears as a close-looped curve in the image. By making use of this optical characteristic the robot can avoid obstacles and move along the corridor by tracking the close-looped curve with an active contour model. Experiments that have been done in a real environment are described.