A feasibility study on a novel method of visual obstacle detection

We discuss potential applications of a novel visual sensing method that is particularly suitable for obstacle detection and/or path planning, in this method, scenes are illuminated by short laser pulses and images are captured by a gated camera. By controlling the pulse width and the gating time, it is possible to get images that contain only objects within a predefined distance from the camera. The rest of the scene remains invisible. The presented experimental results confirm that the method can be prospectively used to create very fast, robust and reliable systems for vision-based navigation. Many significant constraints of the existing algorithms are overcome.