This paper presents the application of an image registration method for a mobile manipulator. The robot is used for scanning natural terrain and detecting metal objects hidden beneath the terrain surface (e.g., landmines) using a metal detector. The range image may be interpreted for visual servoing, map building and path planning, or object recognition. In this work, the image is used to build...

A framework for underwater navigation by combining raw information from different sensors into a single scene description is presented. It is shown that features extracted from such a description are more robust than those extracted from an individual sensor. These descriptions are then combined from many consecutive scenes to form the basis of a new method of map building and representation as...

A semantic-map building method is proposed to localize a robot in the semantic-map. Our semantic-map is organized by using SIFT feature-based object representation. In addition to semantic map, a vision-based relative localization is employed as a process model of extended Kalman filters, where optical flows and Levenberg-Marquardt least square minimization are incorporated to predict relative ...

Our goal is to manipulate and guide an object across an unknown environment toward a goal in a known location in space. Our tools include a system of manipulation robots, which are “blind” and one mobile scout robot who relies on a series of sonar sensors for information about the environment. Previous solutions to this problem have taken a simultaneous guiding and manipulating approach, moving...

Appearance-based autonomous robot localization has some advantages over landmarkbased localization as, for instance, the simplicity of the processes applied to the sensor readings. The main drawback of appearance-based localization is that it requires a map including images taken at known positions in the environment where the robot is expected to move. In this paper, we describe a concurrent m...

The goal of this work is to develop techniques that allow one or more robotic observers to operate with full autonomy while accomplishing the task of model building. The planning algorithm operates using certain simple but flexible models of the observer sensor and actuator abilities. We provide techniques that allow us to implement these sensor models on top of the capabilities of the actual (...

Two key objectives of robot vision are autonomous navigation and mapping. Digital cameras have become relatively cheap in recent years and have appeared in a variety of consumer devices, such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants). It therefore makes sense to try to build systems that use vision as their primary input instead of the more traditional sonar and infrared sensors that have been used...

Radar offers advantages as a robotic perception modality because it is not as vulnerable to the vacuum, dust, fog, rain, snow and light conditions found in construction, mining, agricultural and planetary-exploration environments. However radar has shortcomings such as a large footprint, sidelobes, specularity effects and limited range resolution—all of which result in poor environment maps. Th...