Investigation on Rock Segmentation and 3D Surface Evaluation Based on Binocular Vision

Planetary exploration is the embodiment of a nation’s synthesis science and technology power. The first step is to land a rover to explore the unknown world. The science task always begins from rock and soil. Rock sample and return is one of the important tasks of planetary exploration, which should be accomplished by the rover’s hardware and software. A series of algorithms related to main science exploring object-rock are investigated in this paper, such as a single rock’s segmentation, shadow elimination, stereo matching and 3D reconstruction. C-means clustering and 3D surface evaluation realized by surrounding binocular vision are described. On the basis of the above algorithms, a virtual mechanism is developed by VC++ and OpenGL. The evaluated information for localization is transformed to the arm and leads the arm to locate the relative plane on the rock and shows the grinding process. The experiments and simulation results based on real image show the validity of these algorithms.