3-D range sensor using fiber grating for recognition of autonomous mobile robot´s passage space

A 3-D range sensor system for an autonomous mobile robot is reported. It is important for a mobile robot to recognize spaces of passage. In this sensor system, the passage space is detected with an active vision sensor using a fiber grating, laser diode, and CCD camera. The fiber grating vision sensor can easily obtain 3-D information about the object. In the authors´ system, the object is the floor and the system measures the height of the floor. In this case the height is nearly equal to zero, so the robot can perceive that the measured area is passable. An image processing module using a transputer (T805) is developed for this purpose. In this paper, the principle of the sensor and the method for passage space recognition are presented. The hardware and software of the system for the authors´ autonomous mobile robot “Yamabico” is presented. Experimental results are also presented