Obstacle avoidance control for mobile robot based on single CCD camera and ultrasonic sensors

Abstract

This paper proposes an available method of obstacle avoidance control by using a single CCD camera and ultrasonic sensors mounted on the mobile robot. First, depending on the change of the brightness on the image that occurs from the moving of the mobile robot, we calculate the optical flow by the block matching method based on the normalized correlation and detect the obstacle area on the image. Further, in order to reduce the error of the detection area, by combining the distance information obtained by ultrasonic sensors on the image shown the obstacle area we decide the position of obstacle with high accuracy. Dealing with the position information, we make the reference points for generating the trajectory of the mobile robot. This trajectory is smooth and is generated by minimizing a certain cost function. Then, the mobile robot moves according to the trajectory while avoiding around the obstacle. Finally, usefulness of our proposed method is shown through some experiments. © 2008 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.