Vision locating method based RGB-D camera for amphibious spherical robots

摘要

Location system is crucial to many intelligent robots, especially for underwater robots. To increase the autonomous ability of amphibious spherical robots in underwater environment, an underwater vision locating system was designed in this paper, and the ToF (time of fly) camera (RGB-D camera) was used and introduced in this system. Through the image capture from the camera in water, two kinds of image information could be acquired, which are include color image and depth image. The theoretical analysis show that the location of objective could be calculate easily from those image information. In underwater environment, the depth information attenuated, a calibration experiment for distance correction was designed. These results were used for the coordinate establishing. The construction of the experimental environment and final results were provided. Through the analysis of experimental results, the feasibility of the vision locating method based the RGB-D camera was verified and this system will be used for providing the location of amphibious spherical robots in the future work.