A camera-based real-time polarization sensor and its application to mobile robot navigation

The ability to navigate in complex environments is crucial for both animals and mobile robots. Most mobile robots adopt dead reckoning for navigation because of its high efficiency and low cost. In order to use this navigation mechanism, both distance information and directional information must be available. In this research, a real-time three-channel camera-based polarization navigation sensor is developed to provide directional information for robot navigation. The accuracy of the sensor can be kept within 0.3^o and the sampling rate of the sensor can reach up to 10 fps. For the purpose of navigation, the developed polarization sensor is compared with a compass through outdoor experiments and a new calibration method for the polarization sensor in the outdoor experiments is proposed. The results of dead reckoning based on the polarization sensor and compass are compared with GPS data. The maximum position errors for the compass and polarization sensor are respectively 7.30 m and 8.36 m. Therefore, the developed low-cost polarization sensor can serve as a useful alternative to compass.