scholarly journals Simultaneous Calibration of Odometry and Head-Eye Parameters for Mobile Robots with a Pan-Tilt Camera

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (16) ◽  
pp. 3623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nachaya Chindakham ◽  
Young-Yong Kim ◽  
Alongkorn Pirayawaraporn ◽  
Mun-Ho Jeong

In the field of robot navigation, the odometric parameters, such as wheel radii and wheelbase length, and the relative pose of the optical sensing camera with respect to the robot are very important criteria for accurate operation. Hence, these parameters are necessary to be estimated for more precise operation. However, the odometric and head-eye parameters are typically estimated separately, which is an inconvenience and requires longer calibration time. Even though several researchers have proposed simultaneous calibration methods that obtain both odometric and head-eye parameters simultaneously to reduce the calibration time, they are only applicable to a mobile robot with a fixed camera mounted, not for mobile robots equipped with a pan-tilt motorized camera systems, which is a very common configuration and widely used for wide view. Previous approaches could not provide the z-axis translation parameter between head-eye coordinate systems on mobile robots equipped with a pan-tilt camera. In this paper, we present a full simultaneous mobile robot calibration of head–eye and odometric parameters, which is appropriate for a mobile robot equipped with a camera mounted on the pan-tilt motorized device. After a set of visual features obtained from a chessboard or natural scene and the odometry measurements are synchronized and received, both odometric and head-eye parameters are iteratively adjusted until convergence prior to using a nonlinear optimization method for more accuracy.

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1298 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Yin ◽  
Xiangjun Wang ◽  
Yubo Ni ◽  
Kai Zhou ◽  
Jilong Zhang

Multi-camera systems are widely used in the fields of airborne remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicle imaging. The measurement precision of these systems depends on the accuracy of the extrinsic parameters. Therefore, it is important to accurately calibrate the extrinsic parameters between the onboard cameras. Unlike conventional multi-camera calibration methods with a common field of view (FOV), multi-camera calibration without overlapping FOVs has certain difficulties. In this paper, we propose a calibration method for a multi-camera system without common FOVs, which is used on aero photogrammetry. First, the extrinsic parameters of any two cameras in a multi-camera system is calibrated, and the extrinsic matrix is optimized by the re-projection error. Then, the extrinsic parameters of each camera are unified to the system reference coordinate system by using the global optimization method. A simulation experiment and a physical verification experiment are designed for the theoretical arithmetic. The experimental results show that this method is operable. The rotation error angle of the camera’s extrinsic parameters is less than 0.001rad and the translation error is less than 0.08 mm.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
O.V. Darintsev ◽  
A.B. Migranov ◽  
B.S. Yudintsev

The article deals with the development of a high-speed sensor system for a mobile robot, used in conjunction with an intelligent method of planning trajectories in conditions of high dynamism of the working space.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 45
Author(s):  
Roberto Pagani ◽  
Cristina Nuzzi ◽  
Marco Ghidelli ◽  
Alberto Borboni ◽  
Matteo Lancini ◽  
...  

Since cobots are designed to be flexible, they are frequently repositioned to change the production line according to the needs; hence, their working area (user frame) needs to be often calibrated. Therefore, it is important to adopt a fast and intuitive user frame calibration method that allows even non-expert users to perform the procedure effectively, reducing the possible mistakes that may arise in such contexts. The aim of this work was to quantitatively assess the performance of different user frame calibration procedures in terms of accuracy, complexity, and calibration time, to allow a reliable choice of which calibration method to adopt and the number of calibration points to use, given the requirements of the specific application. This has been done by first analyzing the performances of a Rethink Robotics Sawyer robot built-in user frame calibration method (Robot Positioning System, RPS) based on the analysis of a fiducial marker distortion obtained from the image acquired by the wrist camera. This resulted in a quantitative analysis of the limitations of this approach that only computes local calibration planes, highlighting the reduction of performances observed. Hence, the analysis focused on the comparison between two traditional calibration methods involving rigid markers to determine the best number of calibration points to adopt to achieve good repeatability performances. The analysis shows that, among the three methods, the RPS one resulted in very poor repeatability performances (1.42 mm), while the three and five points calibration methods achieve lower values (0.33 mm and 0.12 mm, respectively) which are closer to the reference repeatability (0.08 mm). Moreover, comparing the overall calibration times achieved by the three methods, it is shown that, incrementing the number of calibration points to more than five, it is not suggested since it could lead to a plateau in the performances, while increasing the overall calibration time.


1992 ◽  
Vol 337 (1281) ◽  
pp. 341-350 ◽  

Localized feature points, particularly corners, can be computed rapidly and reliably in images, and they are stable over image sequences. Corner points provide more constraint than edge points, and this additional constraint can be propagated effectively from corners along edges. Implemented algorithms are described to compute optic flow and to determine scene structure for a mobile robot using stereo or structure from motion. It is argued that a mobile robot may not need to compute depth explicitly in order to navigate effectively.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunhe Gong ◽  
Jingxia Yuan ◽  
Jun Ni

Abstract Robot calibration plays an increasingly important role in manufacturing. For robot calibration on the manufacturing floor, it is desirable that the calibration technique be easy and convenient to implement. This paper presents a new self-calibration method to calibrate and compensate for robot system kinematic errors. Compared with the traditional calibration methods, this calibration method has several unique features. First, it is not necessary to apply an external measurement system to measure the robot end-effector position for the purpose of kinematic identification since the robot measurement system has a sensor as its integral part. Second, this self-calibration is based on distance measurement rather than absolute position measurement for kinematic identification; therefore the calibration of the transformation from the world coordinate system to the robot base coordinate system, known as base calibration, is not necessary. These features not only greatly facilitate the robot system calibration but also shorten the error propagation chain, therefore, increase the accuracy of parameter estimation. An integrated calibration system is designed to validate the effectiveness of this calibration method. Experimental results show that after calibration there is a significant improvement of robot accuracy over a typical robot workspace.


Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linfei Hou ◽  
Liang Zhang ◽  
Jongwon Kim

To improve the energy efficiency of a mobile robot, a novel energy modeling method for mobile robots is proposed in this paper. The robot can calculate and predict energy consumption through the energy model, which provides a guide to facilitate energy-efficient strategies. The energy consumption of the mobile robot is first modeled by considering three major factors: the sensor system, control system, and motion system. The relationship between the three systems is elaborated by formulas. Then, the model is utilized and experimentally tested in a four-wheeled Mecanum mobile robot. Furthermore, the power measurement methods are discussed. The energy consumption of the sensor system and control system was at the milliwatt level, and a Monsoon power monitor was used to accurately measure the electrical power of the systems. The experimental results showed that the proposed energy model can be used to predict the energy consumption of the robot movement processes in addition to being able to efficiently support the analysis of the energy consumption characteristics of mobile robots.


Volume 3 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Firth ◽  
Brian Surgenor ◽  
Peter Wild

This paper describes an elective course in mechatronic systems engineering that is project based and team-oriented with hands-on learning. Working in small teams, students add electronic components to a mobile robot base and write the programs required to make the robot perform a series of tasks. Although the application of mobile robots as an educational tool in a mechatronics course is becoming the norm at many universities, the task based organization of the Queen’s mechatronics course is believed to have a number of novel features. The paper will review the pedagogy of the course, including aspects of the student workload, the interplay between teams, and the task based approach to marking and organization of the laboratories.


2020 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 471-500
Author(s):  
Shih-Yun Lo ◽  
Shiqi Zhang ◽  
Peter Stone

Intelligent mobile robots have recently become able to operate autonomously in large-scale indoor environments for extended periods of time. In this process, mobile robots need the capabilities of both task and motion planning. Task planning in such environments involves sequencing the robot’s high-level goals and subgoals, and typically requires reasoning about the locations of people, rooms, and objects in the environment, and their interactions to achieve a goal. One of the prerequisites for optimal task planning that is often overlooked is having an accurate estimate of the actual distance (or time) a robot needs to navigate from one location to another. State-of-the-art motion planning algorithms, though often computationally complex, are designed exactly for this purpose of finding routes through constrained spaces. In this article, we focus on integrating task and motion planning (TMP) to achieve task-level-optimal planning for robot navigation while maintaining manageable computational efficiency. To this end, we introduce TMP algorithm PETLON (Planning Efficiently for Task-Level-Optimal Navigation), including two configurations with different trade-offs over computational expenses between task and motion planning, for everyday service tasks using a mobile robot. Experiments have been conducted both in simulation and on a mobile robot using object delivery tasks in an indoor office environment. The key observation from the results is that PETLON is more efficient than a baseline approach that pre-computes motion costs of all possible navigation actions, while still producing plans that are optimal at the task level. We provide results with two different task planning paradigms in the implementation of PETLON, and offer TMP practitioners guidelines for the selection of task planners from an engineering perspective.


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