Measuring the distance and orientation of a planar surface using nonstructured lighting - 3D measurement system for indoor mobile robots

The position of the peak of a luminance distribution on each surface gives a geometrical constraint between the plane, the viewer and the light source. If two light sources are arranged at appropriate positions with respect to a camera, the peak positions in the two images directly give the surface orientation and the perpendicular distance to the plane. Our approach is based on measuring the two peak positions. Since the equipment setup is very simple, the proposed technique would be useful, for example, for real-world robotic application such as navigation of indoor mobile robots. The experimental results on the error of measurement show that the method is sufficient for such purposes