In this paper we present a navigation algorithm that enables mobile robots to retrace routes previously taught under the control of human operators in outdoor environments. Possible applications include robot couriers, autonomous vehicles, tour guides and robotic patrols. The appearance-based approach presented in the paper is provably convergent, computationally inexpensive compared with map-based approaches and requires only odometry and a monocular omnidirectional vision sensor. A sequence of reference images is recorded during the human-guided route-teaching phase. Before starting the autonomous phase, the robot needs to be positioned at the beginning of the route. During the autonomous phase, the measurement image is compared with reference images using image cross-correlation performed in the Fourier domain to recover the difference in relative orientation. Route following is achieved by compensating for this orientation difference. Over 18 km of experiments performed under varying conditions demonstrate the algorithm's robustness to lighting variations and partial occlusion. Obstacle avoidance is not included in the current system.
Aihara, N., Iwasa, H., Yokoya, N. and Takemura, H. (1998). Memory-based self-localization using omnidirectional images. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Vol. 2, pp. 1799-1803.
2.
Argyros, A., Bekris, K. and Orphanoudakis, S. (2001). Robot homing based on corner tracking in a sequence of panoramic images. Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Vol. 2, pp. 3-10.
3.
Artac, M., Jogan, M., Leonardis, A. and Bakstein, H. (2005). Panoramic volumes for robot localization. Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS'05), pp. 2668-2674.
4.
Booij, O., Terwijn, B., Zivkovic, Z. and Krose, B. (2007). Navigation using an appearance based topological map. Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3927-3932.
5.
Chahl, J.S. and Srinivasan, M. (2000). A complete panoramic vision system, incorporating imaging, ranging, and three dimensional navigation. Proceedings IEEE Workshop on Omnidirectional Vision, Hilton Head Island, SC , pp. 104-111.
6.
Collett, T.S. (1992). Landmark learning and guidance in insects. Royal Society of London Philosophical Transactions Series B, 337: 295-303.
7.
Davison, A.J. (2003). Real-time simultaneous localisation and mapping with a single camera. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Vision, Nice, France, Vol. 2, pp. 1403-1410.
8.
Fox, D., Burgard, W. and Thrun, S. (1999). Markov localization for mobile robots in dynamic environments. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research , 11: 391-427.
9.
Franz, M., Schölkopf, B. and Bülthoff, H.H. (1998). Where did I take that snapshot? Scene-based homing by image matching. Biological Cybernetics, 79: 191-202.
10.
Goedeme, T., Tuytelaars, T., Van Gool, L., Vanacker, G. and Nuttin, M. (2005). Feature based omnidirectional sparse visual path following. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 1806-1811.
11.
Herath, D.C., Kodagoda, S. and Dissanayake, G. (2006). Simultaneous localisation and mapping: a stereo vision based approach. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 922- 927.
12.
Jogan, M. and Leonardis, A. (2003). Robust localization using an omnidirectional appearance-based subspace model of environment. Robotics and Autonomous Systems , 45(1): 51-72.
13.
Jones, S.D., Andresen, C. and Crowley, J.L. (1997). Appearance based processes for visual navigation . Proceedings of the 1997 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Vol. 2, pp. 551-557.
14.
Judd, S.P.D. and Collett, T.S. (1998). Multiple stored views and landmark guidance in ants. Nature, 392: 710-714.
15.
Labrosse, F. (2006). The visual compass: performance and limitations of an appearance-based method. Journal of Field Robotics, 23(10): 913-941.
16.
Labrosse, F. (2007). Short and long-range visual navigation using warped panoramic images. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 55(9): 675-684.
17.
Li, S., Ochi, A., Yagi, Y. and Yachida, M. (2000). Making 2D map of environments based upon routes scenes. Autonomous Robots, 15(7): 117-128.
18.
Makadia, A. and Daniilidis, K. (2006). Rotation recovery from spherical images without correspondences. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 28(7): 1170- 1175.
19.
Matsumoto, Y., Ikeda, K., Inaba, M. and Inoue, H. (1999). Visual navigation using omnidirectional view sequence . Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Kyongju, South Korea, Vol. 1, pp. 317-322.
20.
Matsumoto, Y., Inaba, M. and Inoue, H. (1996). Visual navigation using view-sequenced route representation . Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Vol. 1, pp. 83-88.
21.
Matsumoto, Y., Sakai, K., Inaba, M. and Inoue, H. (2000). View-based approach to robot navigation. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Takamatsu, Japan, Vol. 3, pp. 1702- 1708.
22.
Menegatti, E., Maeda, T. and Ishiguro, H. (2004). Image-based memory for robot navigation using properties of omnidirectional images. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 47(4): 251-267.
23.
Pajdla, T. and Hlavac, V. (1999). Zero phase representation of panoramic images for image based localization. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns, pp. 550-557.
24.
Royer, E., Bom, J., Dhome, M., Thuilot, B., Lhuillier, M. and F. Marmoiton, F. (2005). Outdoor autonomous navigation using monocular vision. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, (IROS'05), pp. 1253-1258.
25.
Segvic, S., Remazeilles, A., Diosi, A. and Chaumette, F. (2007). Large scale vision-based navigation without an accurate global reconstruction. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 1-8.
26.
Smith, P., Reid, I. and Davison, A. (2006). Real-time monocular SLAM with straight lines. Proceedings of the British Machine Vision Conference, Vol. 1, pp. 17-26.
27.
Srinivasan, M.V. (1998). Animal navigation: ants match as they march. Nature, 392: 660-661.
28.
Stürzl, W. and Mallot, H.A. (2006). Efficient visual homing based on fourier transformed panoramic images. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 54(4): 300-313.
29.
Svoboda, T., Pajdla, T. and Hlavac, V. (1998). Epipolar geometry for panoramic cameras. Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Computer Vision , pp. 218-231.
30.
Tang, L. and Yuta, S. (2002). Indoor navigation for mobile robots using memorized omni-directional images and robot's motion. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems , pp. 269-274.
31.
Vardy, A. and Oppacher, F. (2003). Low-level visual homing. Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, pp. 875-884.
