Visual sonar: fast obstacle avoidance using monocular vision

We contribute a fast system for avoiding unknown obstacles on a mobile robot using a simple camera as the only sensor. The vision module detects objects, both known and unknown, around the robot. Unknown objects are detected by paying attention to occlusions of a floor of known colors. Range and angle to the objects is calculated and used to create a radial model of the vicinity of the robot. This modeling component keeps tracks of objects that are currently outside the field of view of the camera allowing the robot to avoid obstacles it is not currently looking at. We show the effectiveness of the vision and modeling algorithms by creating a simple behavior which wanders around while avoiding obstacles.