Optical Rails: View-Based Robot Navigation

Track Following with an Omnidirectional View Sequence

Optical Rails is a completely view-based method for robot navigation, providing track following along prerecorded routes in a known environment.

A track in Optical Rails is represented by a sequence of views, which have each been recorded at waypoints along the route.
Omnidirectional images of a cheap upwards-facing fisheye camera are used for navigation in Optical Rails.

Overview

The Conditions

  • Optical Rails provides visual track following: After recording a teach-in sequence, a mobile robot autonomously moves forward and backward along that track.
  • Navigation is performed without knowledge of the geometry of the track or the environment.
  • Optical Rails provides purely visual guidance:
    • No markers, laser scanners, or other auxiliary sensors are used,
    • no odometry data or SLAM is required.

Compact view descriptors & Cost effective sensors 

  • The approach requires only simple, cost-effective sensors and uses a compact and efficient representation of acquired views using Spherical Harmonics.
  • Several implementations and experimental results using differential drive robots are shown: Only a cheap omnidirectional camera, a standard computer, and the drive system are required for navigation.

`Featuring Optical Rails' with Orientation Features on the Sphere

Recently, the view represenation of Optical Rails has been extended to use orientation features in the input image, providing a more discriminative view representation with respect to illumation changes.

Related Publications

Dederscheck, David ; Lenhart, Christine ; Friedrich, Holger ; Mester, Rudolf:
Running on Optical Rails
Submitted to IJCV (2010)

Dederscheck, David ; Zahn, Martin ; Friedrich, Holger ; Mester, Rudolf:
Optical Rails: View-Based Track Following with Hemispherical Environment Model and Orientation View Descriptors
Submitted to the 20th International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR 2010)
Istanbul, Turkey, 2010

Dederscheck, David ; Friedrich, Holger ; Lenhart, Christine ; Zahn, Martin ; Mester, Rudolf:
'Featuring' Optical Rails: View-Based Robot Guidance Using Orientation Features on the Sphere.
2009 IEEE 12th International Conference on Computer Vision Workshops
(9th IEEE Workshop on Omnidirectional Vision, Camera Networks and Non-classical Cameras (OMNIVIS2009) Kyoto, Japan 04.10.2009). 
IEEE Computer Society Press, 2009, S. 2156-2163. - ISBN 9781424444410

Dederscheck, David ; Friedrich, Holger ; Lenhart, Christine ; Penc, Joachim ; Rosert, Eduard ;Scherer, Maximilian ; Mester, Rudolf:
Running on Optical Rails: Theory, Implementation and Testing of Omnidirectional View-based Point-To-Point Navigation.
ECCV 2008, The 8th Workshop on Omnidirectional Vision, Camera Networks and Non-classical Cameras - OMNIVIS 2008
INRIA a CCSD electronic archive server based on P.A.O.L (France), http://hal.inria.fr/inria-00325385/en/. 

Friedrich, Holger ; Dederscheck, David ; Rosert, Eduard ; Mester, Rudolf:
View-based navigation using spherical harmonics and 'optical rails' .
In: Swedish Society for Automated Image Analysis (Veranst.): Proceedings SSBA 2008 (Symposium on Image Analysis Lund, Sweden March 12-14, 2008). 2008, S. 47-50.

Friedrich, Holger ; Dederscheck, David ; Rosert, Eduard ; Mester, Rudolf:
Optical Rails. View-based Point-To-Point Navigation using Spherical Harmonics .
In: Rigoll, Gerhard (Hrsg.): Pattern Recognition(30th DAGM Symposium München 10.-13. Juni 2008). 
Berlin : Springer Verlag, 2008, S. 345-354. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), Nr. 5096) - ISBN 978-3-540-69320-8