Experimental results of a 3-D vision system for autonomous robot applications based on a low power semiconductor laser rangefinder

Machine vision systems based on direct laser rangefinders are very interesting for robotics applications demanding high lateral and radial resolution, along with the capability to operate under varying illumination conditions. Furthermore, as the outdoor applications of mobile robots increase, the interest of direct laser rangefinders for machine vision will rise, since they do not present the depth of field limitations of camera-based vision systems. In this paper, we present the first experimental results of a 3-D vision system which has been designed around a direct laser rangefinder (also developed by the authors). Although initially conceived for short range indoor applications, the system has been designed so that it can be easily adapted to longer range outdoor operation