Vision Based Robotic System for Military Applications -- Design and Real Time Validation

This paper presents the design, development and validation of vision based autonomous robotic system for military applications. Sum of Absolute Difference (SAD) algorithm is used for the implementation of the proposed image processing algorithm. It works on the principle of image subtraction. The developed algorithm is validated in real time by change-based moving object detection method. The novelty of this work is the application of the developed autonomous robot for the detection of mines in the war field. Developed algorithm is validated both in offline using MATLAB simulation and in real time by conducting an experiment. Once the confidence of using the algorithm is increased, developed algorithm is coded into the Microcontroller based hardware and is validated in real time. Real time experimental results match well with those of the offline simulation results. However, there is only a small mismatch in distance and accuracy of the target detection, which is due to the limitations of the hardware used for the implementation.