Visual localisation of a robot with an external RGBD sensor

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to visual localisation that uses a camera on the robot coupled wirelessly to an external RGB-D sensor. Unlike systems where an external sensor observes the robot, our approach merely assumes the robots camera and external sensor share a portion of their field of view. Experiments were performed using a Microsoft Kinect as the external sensor and a small mobile robot. The robot carries a smartphone, which acts as its camera, sensor processor, control platform and wireless link. Computational effort is distributed between the smartphone and a host PC connected to the Kinect. Experimental results show that the approach is accurate and robust in dynamic environments with substantial object movement and occlusions.