A fast panoramic imaging system and intelligent imaging technique for mobile robots

Mobile robots often require a full 360° view of their environment in order to perform navigational tasks such identifying landmarks, localizing within the environment, and determining free paths in which to move. In the past few years, several research efforts have focused on obtaining panoramic views (i.e. 360° images) around the robot using wide angle lenses, spherical or conic mirrors, or rotating a camera while imaging. Although the wide angle lens and mirror techniques can provide rapid image acquisition, they lack high azimuth angle resolution required by many mobile robot navigational tasks. Panning (i.e. rotating) a camera on the other hand can provide high azimuth angle resolution, but the process requires a long time to obtain a panoramic view. We introduce a new system that can acquire panoramic images quickly, using the camera panning technique. The system makes use of a fast line scan camera, instead of a slower, conventional area scan camera. In addition, we have developed a coarse-to-fine panoramic imaging technique that is based on smart sensing principles. Using the active vision paradigm, we control the motion of the rotating camera using feedback from the images. This results in high acquisition speeds and proportionally low storage requirements. Preliminary experimentation has been carried out, and results we given