Running on Optical Rails. Theory, Implementation and Testing of Omnidirectional View-based Point-To-Point Navigation

Optical Rails is a purely view-based method for steering a robot through a network of positions in a known environment. Navigation is based on images aquired by an upward-looking omnidirectional camera; even a very modest quality of the optical system is sufficient, since all views are represented in terms of low-order basis functions (spherical harmonics). The theoretical concept of Optical Rails and a first preliminary validation using simulations have been presented very recently [5]; the present paper provides substantial advances in terms of the efficient computation of the spherical harmonics representation, considers the necessary processing particularly for inexpensive cameras, and describes how the link between view-based navigation information and the actual steering of a real robot is achieved. We present strategies for navigation along a prerecorded path that also allow for arbitrary movement of the robot between adjacent positions in the network.