3D Perception and Environment Map Generation for Humanoid Robot Navigation

A humanoid robot that can go up and down stairs, crawl underneath obstacles, or simply walk around requires reliable perceptual capabilities for obtaining accurate and useful information about its surroundings. In this work we present a system for generating 3D environment maps from data taken by stereo vision. At the core is a method for precise segmentation of range data into planar segments based on the algorithm of scan-line grouping [Jiang and Bunke, 1994] extended to cope with the noise dynamics of stereo vision. In off-line experiments we demonstrate that our extensions achieve a more precise segmentation. When compared to Murray’s patchletmethod [2003], we obtain a richer segmentation with a higher accuracy while also requiring far less computations. From the obtained segmentation we then build a 3D environment map using occupancy grid and floor height maps. The resulting representation classifies areas into one of six different types while also providing height information of objects. We apply our perception method for the navigation of the humanoid robot QRIO and present experiments of the robot stepping through narrow space, walking up and down stairs, and crawling underneath a table. keywords: Humanoid robot navigation, 3D environment perception, range image segmentation, stereo vision.