A system to navigate a robot into a ship structure

Abstract

A prototype system has been built to navigate a walking robot into a ship structure. The robot is equipped with a stereo head for monocular and stereo vision. From the CAD-model of the ship good viewpoints are selected such that the head can look at locations with sufficient features. The edge features for the views are extracted automatically. The pose of the robot is estimated from the features detected by two vision approaches. One approach searches in the full image for junctions and uses the stereo information to extract 3D information. The other method is monocular and tracks 2D edge features. To achieve robust tracking of the features a model-based tracking approach is enhanced with a method of Edge Projected Integration of Cues (EPIC). EPIC uses object knowledge to select the correct features in real-time. The two vision systems are synchronised by sending the images over a fibre channel network. The pose estimation uses both the 2D and 3D features and locates the robot within a few centimetres over the range of ship cells of several metres. Gyros are used to stabilise the head while the robot moves. The system has been developed within the RobVision project and the results of the final demonstration are given.