Active object recognition using vocabulary trees

For mobile robots to perform certain tasks in human environments, fast and accurate object classification is essential. Actively exploring objects by changing viewpoints promises an increase in the accuracy of object classification. This paper presents an efficient feature-based active vision system for the recognition and verification of objects that are occluded, appear in cluttered scenes and may be visually similar to other objects present. This system is designed using a selector-observer framework where the selector is responsible for the automatic selection of the next best viewpoint and a Bayesian `observer´ updates the belief hypothesis and provides feedback. A new method for automatically selecting the `next best viewpoint´ is presented using vocabulary trees. It is used to calculate a weighting for each feature based on its perceived uniqueness, allowing the system to select the viewpoint with the greatest number of `unique´ features. The process is sped-up as new images are only captured at the `next best viewpoint´ and processed when the belief hypothesis of an object is below some pre-defined threshold. The system also provides a certainty measure for the objects identity. This system out performs randomly selecting a viewpoint as it processes far fewer viewpoints to recognise and verify objects in a scene.