Autonomous image-based exploration for mobile robot navigation

— Image-based navigation paradigms have recently emerged as an interesting alternative to conventional modelbased methods in mobile robotics. In this paper, we augment the existing image-based navigation approaches by presenting a novel image-based exploration algorithm. The algorithm facilitates a mobile robot equipped only with a monocular pan-tilt camera to autonomously explore a typical indoor environment. The algorithm infers frontier information directly from the images and displaces the robot towards regions that are informative for navigation. The frontiers are detected using a geometric context-based segmentation scheme that exploits the natural scene structure in indoor environments. In the due process, a topological graph of the workspace is built in terms of images which can be subsequently utilised for the tasks of localisation, path planning and navigation. Experimental results on a mobile robot in an unmodified laboratory and corridor environments demonstrate the vali...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICRA
• Authors: D. Santosh, Supreeth Achar, C. V. Jawahar
• Keywords: ICRA 2008, Image-based Navigation, Robotics, Robots, Vision-based Robot Navigation