Visibility Scripts for Active Feature-based Inspection

We report the first stage of a project aimed at computing visibility scripts for active inspection applications, in which a robot-mounted sensor observes a known object from different viewpoints. Visibility scripts describe the optimal sensor position for a given inspection task and may involve different visibility requirements, e.g. achieving optimal visibility of a single object feature or simultaneous visibility of a set of features. We discuss also stereo visibility, or the optimal placement of a stereo head within the visibility region of a feature. Stereo visibility is a novel feature in the panorama of comparable systems and may prove nontrivial in some situations. Script generation is based on an approximate visibility space, the property sphere. We take into account several constraints imposed by most real systems, for instance the limited workspace of a real sensor or the desired resolution at which a feature must be observed.