Small Robot Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance¶
3D cameras like the original Kinect quickly became popular as navigation sensors in robotics. The minimum range of such cameras was problematic for small robots, however, as they frequently interacted with objects at close range. We applied after-market optics to the Kinect to reduce the minimum range and implemented a real-time algorithm for correcting the resulting point cloud distortion. With better minimum range, we demonstrated improved close-range obstacle avoidance for small robots.
References¶
M. Draelos, N. Deshpande, and E. Grant. The Kinect up close: adaptations for short-range imaging. In IEEE Conference on Multisensor Fusion and Integration for Intelligent Systems (MFI), 251–256. Sept 2012. doi:10.1109/MFI.2012.6343067.