Navigation system based on ceiling landmark recognition for autonomous mobile robot

In this paper, we propose a vision based navigation system for autonomous mobile robots which recognizes air-conditioning device (anemo) as landmarks located on ceiling. Because landmarks on ceiling are not obstructed by any objects, robots can find them easier than landmarks on the floor. In the recognition process, gathering quadrangles in the image are regarded as anemo, the gravity center and the slope of these quadrangles are calculated. Then the navigation system can calculate the distance and the angle of the anemo from map information. As a result, the navigation system can identify the present robot´s position and orientation. By the proposed algorithm, if the landmark is not being taken completely, the landmark is inferred by partial information. In the experiments, we compared the error made by the robot which are navigated by our system with the error made by the robot which moves based on deadreckoning