Indoor Environment Modeling with Stereo Camera for Mobile Robot Navigation

In this paper we propose a new method for modeling indoor environment with stereo camera and suggest a localization method for mobile robot navigation on the basis of it. From the viewpoint of easiness in map building and exclusion of artificiality, the main idea of this paper is that environment is represented as global topological map and each node has omni-directional metric and color information by using stereo camera and pan/tilt mechanism. We use the depth and color information itself in image pixel as feature for environmental abstraction. In addition, we use only the depth and color information at horizontal centerline in image, where optical axis is passing. The usefulness of this m...