Household Service Robotics

Chapter 3.2

An Error-Aware Incremental Planar Motion Estimation Method Using Paired Vertical Lines for Small Robots in Urban Areas¹

Ji Zhang¹,  and Dezhen Song^2     1The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA     ²Computer Science and Engineering Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

Abstract

We report on our development of a monocular visual odometry system based on vertical lines such as vertical edges of buildings and poles in urban areas. Because vertical lines are easy to extract, insensitive to lighting conditions/shadows, and sensitive to robot movements on a ground plane, they are excellent landmarks. We derive an incremental visual odometry method based on vertical line pairs. We analyze ...