Autonomous robot's navigation

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Software Interfacing
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Since October 2007 I developed new object recognition algorithm "Associative Video Memory" (AVM).

Algorithm AVM uses a principle of multilevel decomposition of recognition matrices, it is steady against noise of the camera and well scaled, simply and quickly for training.

And now I want to introduce my experiment with robot navigation based on visual landmark beacons: "Follow me" and "Walking by gates".


Follow Me


Walking from p2 to p1 and back

I embodied both algorithms to Navigator plugin for using within RoboRealm software.
So, you can try now to review my experiments with using AVM Navigator.

The Navigator module has two base algorithms:

-= Follow me =-
The navigation algorithm do attempts to align position of a tower and the body
of robot on the center of the first recognized object in the list of tracking
and if the object is far will come nearer and if it is too close it will be
rolled away back.

-= Walking by gates =-
The gate data contains weights for the seven routes that indicate importance of this gateway for each route. At the bottom of the screen was added indicator "horizon" which shows direction for adjust the robot's motion for further movement on the route. Field of gates is painted blue if the gates do not participate in this route (weight rate 0), and warmer colors (ending in yellow) show a gradation of "importance" of the gate in the current route.

  • The procedure of training on route
    For training of the route you have to indicate actual route (button "Walking by way")
    in "Nova gate" mode and then you must drive the robot manually by route (the gates will be installed automatically). In the end of the route you must click on the button "Set checkpoint" and then robot will turn several times on one spot and mark his current location as a checkpoint.

So, if robot will walk by gates and suddenly will have seen some object that can be recognized then robot will navigate by the "follow me" algorithm.

If robot can't recognize anything (gate/object) then robot will be turning around on the spot
for searching (it may twitch from time to time in a random way).

For more information see also thread: "Autonomous robot's navigation" at Trossen Robotics.

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Good Bot
but ! in what way is this related to arduino?

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Can you describe the image processing hardware? Is it all done on the bot?

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You can try to use arduino bot as remote controlled platform with radio camera and connect it to you PC with RoboRealm software or to use Mini ITX + arduino controller for bot control.

I used in my experiments:

Software: Windows 7, RoboRealm\AVM_Navigator
http://www.roborealm.com/help/AVM_Navigator.php

Hardware:

  • tracks platform;
  • motor/servo controller (OR-AVR-M128-DS + OR-USB-UART);
  • HXT12k (servo for camera rotation);
  • Logitech HD Webcam C270;
  • 3Q NetTop Qoo (Intel Atom 230 1600Mhz).

I think that somebody (who want to navigate robot) would like to make it at arduino controller :wink:

It's test of new algorithm for AVM Navigator v0.7.3. In this video was demonstrated how robot just try to go back on checkpoint from different positions of the learned route.

First in video the robot has received command: "go to the checkpoint" and when robot arrived to the checkpoint then I brought robot back (several times) in different position of learned route. When robot noticed the changes then it indicated that robot was displaced because any commands were not given by robot to his motors however changes were seen in the input image.

Then robot started looking around and localized his current position. Further the robot just calculated path from current position to the checkpoint and went there (and so forth).