Visual robot navigation

这项研究计划的目的是开发机器人在非结构化环境中导航的方法。非结构化环境是那些没有专门为机器人操作设计的环境。这里采用的方法部分受到了生物学模型的启发。目前关于蜜蜂、蚂蚁和黄蜂等昆虫导航的观点是，这些昆虫在它们的整个环境中捕捉“快照图像”。然后，它们使用一种称为视觉归巢的过程在快照位置之间移动。这项研究将把类似的方法应用于机器人。机器人导航是一个难点问题，主要有两个原因：(1)利用里程信息估计位置会产生累积误差。换句话说，机器人走得越远，就越不确定自己的位置。(2)外观相同的地方无法区分。有趣的是，大多数现有方法可以解决上述困难之一，但很少同时解决这两个问题。这个研究项目将利用视觉导航，让机器人在之前拍摄过快照图像的地方之间旅行。我们将从基于归巢的现有导航模型开始，并纳入其他见解，以解决上述问题。这项研究的最终目标将是一套方法，使机器人能够在已知地点之间健壮地行进。挑战在于使这些方法真正健壮，以便在忽略噪声的同时利用可用的视觉线索。鲁棒导航机器人的应用是多种多样的。一些示例应用包括自动驾驶、行星探测、搜索和救援、监视、遥感和家庭清洁。

The objective of this research program is to develop methods for robots to navigate in unstructured environments.  Unstructured environments are those which have not been specifically designed for robot operation.  The approach taken here is partially inspired by biological models.  The current view of navigation in insects such as bees, ants, and wasps is that these insects capture "snapshot images" throughout their environment.  They then use a procedure called visual homing to move between snapshot positions.  This research will apply a similar methodology to robots. Robot navigation is a difficult problem for two fundamental reasons:  (1) Using odometric information to estimate position incurs a cumulative error.  In other words, the further a robot travels, the more unsure it becomes of its position.  (2) Places that have the same appearance cannot be distinguished.  Interestingly, most existing methods can address one of the above difficulties, but seldom both. This research program will utilize visual homing to allow a robot to travel between places where it had previously captured snapshot images.  We will begin with an existing model for navigation based on homing, and incorporate additional insights so as to resolve the problems described above.  The desired end product of this research will be a set of methods which allow a robot to travel robustly between known places.  The challenge is to make these methods truly robust so that available visual cues are utilized while noise is ignored. The applications for robustly navigating robots are both numerous and diverse.  Some example applications are autonomous driving, planetary exploration, search and rescue, surveillance, remote sensing, and household cleaning.