Active parameter control for the low level vision system of a mobile robot

Computer vision systems are today an important sensor for intelligent robotic systems. However, the design of a vision system that a robot can use as a fast and robust sensor in a complex, partially unknown and dynamic environment is still difficult. A main reason for this is that the parameters of vision systems are often adjusted by hand and remain static during the operation of the robot. In this paper we present a general architecture that adapts the the parameters of a segment based low-level vision system dynamically to increase its speed and robustness. Adaptation is done to a priori knowledge about the environment or to the sensor data itself. The architecture is implemented on a mobile robot using special hardware that allows real-time operation. Quantitative experimental data on its performance is given