Active parameter control for the low level vision system of a mobile robot

Computer vision systems are today an important sensor for intelligent robotic systems. However, the design of a vision system that a robot can use as a fast and robust sensors in a complex, partially unknown and dynamic environment is still diicult. A main reason for this is that the parameters of vision systems are often adjusted by hand and remain static during the operation of the robot. In this paper we present an general architecture that adapts the the parameters of a segment based low-level vision system dynamically to increase its speed and robustness. Adaptation is done to a priori knowledge about the environment or to the sensor data itself. The architecture is implemented on a mobile robot using special hardware that allows real-time operation. Quantitative experimental data on its performance is given.