Autonomous configuration of parameters in robotic digital cameras

Abstract

In the past few years, the use of digital cameras in robotic applications has been increasing significantly. The main areas of application of these robots are the industry and military, where these cameras are used as sensors that allow the robot to take the relevant information of the surrounding environment and making decisions. To extract information from the acquired image, such as shapes or colors, the configuration of the camera parameters, such as exposure, gain, brightness or white-balance, is very important. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for the autonomous setup of the most important parameters of digital cameras for robotic applications. The proposed algorithm uses the intensity histogram of the images and a black and a white area, known in advance, to estimate the parameters of the camera. We present experimental results that show the effectiveness of our algorithms. The images acquired after calibration show good properties for further processing, independently of the initial configuration of the camera. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.