SEMI-SPHERICAL VISION SENSOR WITH PERCEPTION FUNCTIONS FOR MOBILE ROBOTS.

摘要

The present invention describes a semi-spherical vision sensor, which is mainly used in mobile robotic applications. The invention approximately has 130.5 degrees of sensing angle, which device is controlled by an USB/IEEE1394 communication port. The device includes a container with a semi-circular geometry which lengthwise includes an arrangement of four cameras mechanically calibrated in the epipolar plane, the same being organised in such a manner that each image acquired by each camera has an overlapped area. The present invention is characterised in that it has a fifth camera located at the upper portion of the container, which may detect the aerial space from where visual patterns of the environment are extracted for determining the displacement over the same sensor plane. The device of the present invention is operated by a computer with a software organised in the form of logic sensors, where each of these sensors provides a different sensing form, such as panoramic images, st ereo information, separated digital images and also Cartesian coordinates of the displacement or movement of the invention on board of mobile robots.