Using Barcodes for Robotic Landmarks

This paper presents an innovative vision “sensor”. The proposed method uses a vision system for recognizing distant barcodes. It is ideal for Real-Time Self Localization since the proposed algorithm uses light-weight processing of the image obtained by a multi-purpose vision system. The choice of the marker is discussed and the proposed solution uses the industrial barcode standard of Interleaved 2 of 5 to retrieve a measurement of relative position (x, y, z). The angle formed between the camera and the marker is obtained from the “perspective” of the seen image. The results section discusses the measurement data quality for the actual set of experiments. A maximum error of 0.2m was achieved for a camera of 1024x768 with a lens viewing angle of 60o and markers printed on a 14.8cm x 21cm plain paper for localization on a 4x4m world. Typical processing times are between 18 and 25 ms.