ALGORITHMS DEVELOPED FOR TWO PROTOTYPES OF AIRBORNE VISION-BASED CONTROL OF GROUND ROBOTS

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of visual navigation of ground robots using a camera positioned at a certain elevation above the confined area. Unmanned autonomous robots will be widely used very soon for land use, treatment, and monitoring. Technologies, that can be used for such robots, are already described previously in "International Journal of GEOMATE" by Kupervasser et al. and Djaja et al.. Developing these technologies is continued and presented here by new patented technology of airborne vision-based control of ground robots. The main idea is that robot’s “eyes” is not located on robot but are independent autonomous system. As a result, the “eyes” can go up and observe the robot from above. Algorithms, presented in this paper, are used for real simple physical prototypes of a such system. The system consists of a camera connected to the ceiling, to computer which controls a toy tank. Computer program analyses image from the camera, finds difference between real position of the tank and desirable position, and send trough Wi-Fi command to decrease this difference. Also, the next more complex prototype of a such system is very shortly described. This prototype is planned to create in framework of the KAMIN incentive program (Israel).