Visual obstacle detection for automatically guided vehicles

A stereo obstacle detection system has been developed for automatically guided vehicles that operate on flat (factory) floors. The system does not attempt to reconstruct the 3D environment visually but simply tries to detect obstacles on the floor in the vehicle´s path. The approach to stereo image processing uses inverse perspective mappings to facilitate matching of the binocular field of vision against the expected 3D structure of the environment. Assuming a known relative camera model, a geometrical image transformation is computed which essentially compensates the stereo disparities for the image points of the floor. After the mapping operation the images are compared and local mismatches are interpreted as possible obstacle locations. The system has been successfully tested in a factory environment. The implementation runs on standard microprocessor hardware in real time