Visualizing mobile robot sonar data using polygon set operations

Alan D. Murta; Kenneth Roper

doi:10.1117/12.378911

28 February 2000 Visualizing mobile robot sonar data using polygon set operations

Alan D. Murta, Kenneth Roper

Proceedings Volume 3960, Visual Data Exploration and Analysis VII; (2000) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.378911
Event: Electronic Imaging, 2000, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

Mobile robots commonly employ a variety of sensor in order to gather information about their immediate environment. Whereas some types of sensor produce a wealth of environmental information in a human-understandable for, it is often low-level data such as range-finder measurements which are of greatest interest to the operator. This paper describes an approach to the visualization of data form acoustic sensor which use echo-location to determine object distances. Acoustic distance measurement is problematic in that echoes may fail to be returned to the source, range assessments may be inaccurate, and ghost readings may also appear in the data. The visualization method described attempts to overcome the idiosyncrasies of acoustic sensing to present a relatively consistent representation of the robot's spatial environment to the operator. It maintains a geometric model of the perceived environment, allowing ambiguities in the current sensor data to be identified. The model is updated using polygon set operations to incorporate new sensor readings. Two features are recorded: the extent of free space identified within the environment, and the location of any obstacles which have been detected. This visualization approach is also tolerant to inaccuracies in odometry measurement. An experimental application of the method is reported.

Citation Download Citation

Alan D. Murta and Kenneth Roper "Visualizing mobile robot sonar data using polygon set operations", Proc. SPIE 3960, Visual Data Exploration and Analysis VII, (28 February 2000); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.378911

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