Image-based homing

A system that allows a robot to use a model of its environment to navigate is reported. The system maps the environment as a set of snapshots of the world taken at target locations. The robot uses an image-based local homing algorithm to navigate between neighboring and target locations. The approach has an imaging system that acquires a compact, 360 degrees representation of the environment as an intensity waveform, and an image-based, qualitative homing algorithm that allows the robot to navigate without explicitly inferring three-dimensional structure from the image. The result of an experiment in a typical indoor environment are reported. They show that image-based navigation is a feasible alternative to approaches using 3-D models and more complex model-based vision algorithms.<>