Computer-vision based estimation of the position of a robot in its working environment

A computer vision technique designed to estimate the position and orientation of a robot manipulator in its working environment is presented. The manipulator is expected to execute live-line maintenance tasks. The position and orientation are obtained from the segmentation of two grey-level images, of the scene taken from a single point of view, and from a priori knowledge of the scene. Experimental results are presented and the method is evaluated on the basis of accuracy and speed