Visual Robots - Carnegie Mellon University

This three year research project at the robotics institute of Carnegie Mellon university in the USA has the full title: "Robust Navigation by Probabilistic Volumetric Sensing". The aim of the project is to develop vision software which will run in the artificial brains of utility robots such as fully autonomous floor cleaners and security guards etc.

The project is set to run from May 1999 until May 2002 and is being led by the well known robotics scientist Hans Moravec. It is hoped that the vision software developed will enable robots to navigate using a 3D awareness of their environment. They should be tolerant of unexpected obstacles and be able to quickly learn new routes.

The project consists of roughly 3 stages, each of which is to take about a year:

Development of the perception layer
Development of the navigation layer and recognition of objects
Development of applications, e.g. a robotic cleaner
The perception layer has seen the development of algorithms and software which maps colour from stereoscopic images into 3D grids of spatial occupancy. For example, the image to the right shows an office space as perceived by the software. Objects such as chairs and doors can be recognised.


The test platform for this robotic vision will be the Cye robot. This robot is commercially available from Probotics as a household assistant. The image to the left shows Cye trailing a cordless vacuum cleaner. In this project Cye will instead be trailing a trailer fitted with an iBook laptop computer. The laptop will run the vision software and interpret images captured from three onboard QuickCam cameras.

Links:
Hans Moravec's Homepage: www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm