Detection of irregular ground area by single camera on mobile vehicles
Masahiro Tanaka, Satoru Onishi · International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems · 2012
For moving robots of outdoor use, it is essential to detect the movable ground area. In this paper, we propose a new method of making distinction between points on the ground surface (on-ground points) and not on the ground surface (off-ground points). These points are detected as feature points by SURF algorithm. In the model building phase, we build the projection transformation model of the ground seen from the camera angle. In the implementation phase, the camera detects feature points by SURF, and then makes correspondence of feature points between the consecutive frames. By inverse projection, the points can be classified into on-ground and off-ground points. This phase is executed online. We propose the principle of this theory and show an example to validate the theory.