Kavraki Lab

Physical and Biological Computing

Keywords:

Abstract:

We propose a novel, vision-based method for robot
homing, the problem of computing a route so that a robot can return to
its initial home position after the execution of an arbitrary
prior path. The method assumes that the robot tracks visual
features in panoramic views of the environment that it acquires as it
moves. By exploiting only angular information regarding the tracked
features, a local control strategy moves the robot between two
positions, provided that there are at least three features that can be
matched in the panoramas acquired at these positions. The strategy is
successful when certain geometric constraints on the configuration of
the two positions relative to the features are fulfilled. In order to
achieve long-range homing, the features