An integrated vision-guided robotic system for rapid vehicle inspection

This paper presents the design and integration of a vision-guided robotic system for automated and rapid vehicle inspection. The main objective of this work is to achieve a seamless and efficient integration of several sensors and robotic components to rapidly acquire RGB-D data over the surface of a vehicle in order to efficiently navigate a robotic manipulator along the vehicle´s surface and within regions of interest that are selectively identified. An efficient and accurate integration of information from multiple RGB-D sensors is proposed to achieve fully automated and rapid 3D profiling of automotive vehicles of various types and shapes. The proposed integrated system merges all components while taking into consideration strict requirements in the context of vehicle security screening. Experimental results at the different processing stages are presented and analyzed.