Use of TV cameras for robot position determination

Computer vision plays an important role in robotic systems, and is being extensively used for inspection and shape recognition. However, not much work has been done on using a TV camera as a position sensor to control the location of moving objects in real-time. Stationary calibrated cameras, mounted at a specific height from the workspace plane are used as position sensors for the location determination of mobile robots. The vision system is assigned to identify the robot and to determine its position with reference to a certain coordinate system. The position of the robot is derived from a shape with a contrasting colour drawn on its top through segmentation and detection processes. Several operations take place for an adequate robot position determination; these are: camera calibration, geometric distortions correction, segmentation, parallax correction, and scaling