Visual servoing control of autonomous robot calibration and navigation

This article addresses the problem of how to visually control a mobile robot in a navigation process. The algorithms proposed may be used either for external calibration to locate the robot accurately in a structured environment, or in visual servoing as feedback to the controller which is maintaining the robot on a navigation course. Herein, we examine the problem in a special case, where the ground plane is assumed to be horizontal and there are two locally parallel sidelines available. This assumption holds in many indoor environments, such as hallways, where the system's success has been demonstrated. The algorithms use geometric features such as vanishing points and line orientations. Both theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the algorithms work robustly and accurately.