Feature extraction and visual navigation on "truckbot"

Test of vid and AI blackboard for truckbot.

I'm working on an autonomous "reconbot". The mechanicals are an ultra-cheap hacked 1/6-scale RC truck with a mini x86 box and webcam mounted on a boom arm.

The concept is to have all navigation handled by vision processing. The thing doesn't even have a compass -- it has to judge heading by "optical flow" techniques.

This vid shows vision from truckbot as it navigates a footpath and doorways using simple feature extraction.

It tries to follow lines leading away, or move orthagonal to lines crossing its path.

The bot is only semi-autonomous at present; it needed a few jabs on the remote control to get it through the first door. But it managed to get through the 2nd door and dodge the plants on its own. :-o

After it jumped off the path altogether I took it under full remote control. You can only trust s/w so far. :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• computer vision
• AI
• robots
• autonomy