The design and development of active stereovision system for mobile robot navigation

Sharing mechanisms with biological vision systems, real-time active stereovision system built from component parts was developed for mobile robot autonomous navigation. Firstly, four degrees of freedom of stereo platform with optimal baseline 34 cm, was designed for accomplishing visual tasks independently like pan, tilt and vergence of stereo camera. Secondly, step-motor drive scheme combined with closed loop servo controller was selected for multi-freedom controller in view of motor resolution requirement and system cost. Then, camera parameters controller was highlighted to enhance system adaptability by adjusting aperture, focus and zoom. Finally, stereo camera synchronization was guaranteed with the adoption two independent image-grabbers combined external synchronous signal. The strategies adopted for the design of the system has been proven to be very effective with applications on the pioneer 2-DXE mobile robot.