Visual Techniques for the Controlled Movement of Docking

This paper discusses ongoing research in developing vision strategies for the docking behavior of an autonomous mobile robot, concentrating on the needs of the controlled movement of docking in a manufacturing environment. In the controlled movement, a perceptual strategy must provide feedback to the motor behavior in order to make accurate corrections to the mobile robot’s approach trajectory. Two novel techniques have been developed: adaptive tracking of an artificial landmark through a sequence of images, and the use of texture to recover relative depth and orientation. Experimental results are presented. These techniques, in conjunction with an inverse perspective transform technique for the coarse recovery of depth and orientation, form the basis of the perceptual strategy for the controlled movement.