Rapid door-number recognition by a humanoid mobile robot

A static door-number recognition system for mobile robots in office buildings is presented. The motivation behind the development of such a system is to update the localization results of dead reckoning or improve other distance-sensor based localization. Emphasis is placed on minimizing the processing time of a template-matching based recognition method to enable real-time image-based localization for a mobile robot. A gap-based heuristic idea is put forward to increase the recognition accuracy. The experimental results show that door-numbers can be rapidly and robustly identified under different environmental conditions and postures of the camera.