Combining Dense Structure From Motion and Visual SLAM in a Behavior-Based Robot Control Architecture

• Main Authors: Geert De Cubber, Sid Ahmed Berrabah, Daniela Doroftei, Yvan Baudoin, Hichem Sahli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2010-02-01
• Series: International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems
• Subjects: Visually guided robots; Dense Structure from Motion; Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping; Behavior-based Robot Control; Intelligent Mobile Robots
• Online Access: http://www.intechopen.com/articles/show/title/combining-dense-structure-from-motion-and-visual-slam-in-a-behavior-based-robot-control-architecture
• ISSN: 1729-8806; 1729-8814

In this paper, we present a control architecture for an intelligent outdoor mobile robot. This enables the robot to navigate in a complex, natural outdoor environment, relying on only a single on-board camera as sensory input. This is achieved through a twofold analysis of the visual data stream: a dense structure from motion algorithm calculates a depth map of the environment and a visual simultaneous localization and mapping algorithm builds a map of the surroundings using image features. This information enables a behavior-based robot motion and path planner to navigate the robot through the environment. In this paper, we show the theoretical aspects of setting up this architecture.