Dec 31, 2015
Research in the DV lab
• Tracking, segmentation• Model-building,
mapping, and learning• Cue combination and
selection• Auto-calibration of
sensors• Current projects:
– Road following, architectural modeling
Road Following: Background
• Edge-based methods: Fit curves to lane lines or road borders – [Taylor et al., 1996; Southall & Taylor, 2001; Apostoloff &
Zelinsky, 2003]
• Region-based methods: Segment image based on discriminating charac- teristic such as color or texture
– [Crisman & Thorpe, 1991; Zhang & Nagel, 1994; Rasmussen, 2002; Apostoloff & Zelinsky, 2003]
from Apostoloff& Zelinsky, 2003
Problematic Scenes for Standard Approaches
No good contrast or edges, but organizing feature is vanishing point, which indicates road direction
Grand Challenge sample terrain Antarctic “ice highway”
Results: Curve Tracking
Integrate vanishing point directions to get points along curves parallel to (but not necessarily on) road
Correspondence-based Mosaicing
• Minimum of 4 corresponding points in two images sufficient to define transformation warping one into other
• Can be done manually or automatically
Road Shape Estimation (3 cameras)
• Road edge tracking– Estimate quadratic curvature via
Kalman filter with Sobel edge measurements
Motion-based Mosaicing
• It’s possible to make mosaics of cameras with non-overlapping fields of view provided we have sequences from them (Irani et al., 2001)– Overlapping pixels are wasted pixels
• We’re working on approaches for n cameras > 2
Motivation: DARPA Grand Challenge
• Organized by DARPA (the U. S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
• A robot road race through the desert from Barstow, CA to Las Vegas, NV on March 13, 2004
• Prize for the winning team: $1 million (nobody won)
• Running again next October with $2 million prize
Problem: How to Use Roads as Cues?
Bob’s track relative to course corridors
(No road following)
We’re working on integrating camera views from vehicle with aerial photos
Merging Structure into Local Map
• Integrate raw depth measurements from several successive frames using vehicle inertial estimates
• Combine with camera information• We’re working on calibration techniques
courtesy of A. Zelinsky
Laser-Camera Registration
Range image (180 x 32)90° horiz. x 15° vert.
Video frame (360 x 240)
Registeredlaser, camera
Robot Platform for Mapping Project
PTZ camera
Wirelessethernet GPS antenna
Onboard computer
Analog video capture card
Not shown: electronic compass, tilt sensor
View Planning
• Where to take the photos from?• Hard constraints: Need overlapping fields of view for stereo
correspondences• Soft constraints: Balance accuracy of estimated 3-D model,
quality of appearance (texture maps) with acquisition, computation time– Based on camera field of view, height of building, placement of
occluding objects like trees and other buildings
Path Planning
• How to get a robot from point A to point B?– Criteria: Distance, difficulty, uncertainty
Path Planning
GPS-referenced CAD map of campus buildings is available
Aerial photos contain information aboutpaths, vegetation as well as buildings
Obstacle Avoidance
How to detect trash cans, people, walls, bushes, trees, etc. and smoothly combine detours around them with global path planned from map and executed with GPS?