Mobile robot navigation using artificial landmarks

Abstract

This article describes a landmark-based navigation technique for a mobile robot. Robot position estimation is achieved by using a camera and a navigational landmark pattern, which consists of simple geometrical patterns. The Modified Elliptical Hough Transform (MEHT) is developed for detecting and measuring the projection of the landmark in the camera's image space. Robustness of this approach is demonstrated by studying the cases of noisy image data and partial occlusion of the landmark pattern. Error analysis of MEHT is performed to provide more understanding of the effects of applying elliptical approximation to the projection of a circular pattern. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.