Stereo Visual Odometry for Mobile Robots on Uneven Terrain

In this paper we present a stereo visual odometry system for mobile robots that is not sensitive to uneven terrain. Two cameras is mounted perpendicular to the ground and height and traveled distance are calculated using normalized cross correlation. A method for evaluating the system is developed, where flower boxes containing representative surfaces are placed in a metal-working lathe. The cameras are mounted on the carriage which can be positioned manually with 0.1 mm accuracy. Images are captured every 10 mm over 700 mm. The tests are performed on eight different surfaces representing real world situations. The resulting error is less than 0.6% of traveled distance on surfaces where the maximum height variation is measured to 96 mm. The variance is measured for eight test runs, total 5.6 m, to 0.040 mm. This accuracy is sufficient for crop-scale agricultural operations.