Describing a Robot

Published

November 29, 1985

Author(s)

Tsai H. Hong, Michael O. Shneier

Abstract

This correspondence describes a method of building and maintaining a spatial representation for the workspace of a robot, using a sensor that moves about in the world. From the know camera position at which an image is obtained, and two-dimensional silhouettes of the image, a series of cones is projected to describe the possible positions of the objects in the space. When an object is seen from several viewpoints, the intersections of the cones constrain the position and size of the object. After several views have been processed, the representation of the object begins to resemble its true shape. At all times, the spatial representation containss the best guess at the true situation in the world with uncertainties in position and shape explicitly represented. An octree is used as the data structure for the representation. It not only provides a relatively compact representation, but also allows fast access to information and enables large parts of the workspace to be ignored. The purpose of constructing this representation is not so much to recognize objects as to describe the volumes in the workspace that are occupied and those that are empty. This enables trajectory planning to be carried out, and also provides a means of spatially indexing objects without needing to represent the objects at an extremely fine resolution. The spatial representation is one part of a complex representation of the workspace used by the sensory system of a robot manipulator in understanding its environment.

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence

Volume

PAMI-7 No.6

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

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Keywords

3-D Reconstruction, Octrees

Citation

Hong, T. and Shneier, M. (1985), Describing a Robot, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=820197 (Accessed July 26, 2024)