We designed a new omnidirectional image sensor COPIS (Conic Projection Image Sensor) to guide the navigation of a mobile robot. The feature of COPIS is passive sensing of the omnidirectional image of the environment, in real-time (at the frame rate of a TV camera), using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in a real world environment. We report here a method for navigating a robot by detecting the azimuth of each object in the omnidirectional image. The azimuth is matched with the given environmental map. The robot can precisely estimate its own location and motion (the velocity of the robot) because COPIS observes a 360/spl deg/ view around the robot, even when all edges are not extracted correctly from the omnidirectional image. The robot can avoid colliding against unknown obstacles and estimate locations by detecting azimuth changes, while moving about in the environment. Under the assumption of the known motion of the robot, an environmental map of an indoor scene is generated by monitoring azimuth change in the image.>

The authors propose a novel omnidirectional image sensor, COPIS (Conic Projection Image Sensor), for guiding the navigation of a mobile robot. It performs passive sensing of the omnidirectional image of the environment in real time (at the frame rate of a TV camera) using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in the real-world environment with moving objects. The authors describe a method for estimating the location and the motion of the robot by detecting the azimuth of each object in the omnidirectional image. In this method, the azimuth is matched with the given environmental map. They also present a method to avoid collision against unknown obstacles and estimate their locations by detecting their azimuth changes while the robot is moving in the environment. Using the COPIS system, several experiments in the real world were performed.>

Proposes a new omnidirectional image sensor, COPIS (conic projection image sensor), for guiding navigation of a mobile robot. It features passive sensing of omnidirectional images of the environment in real-time (at the frame rate of a TV camera) using a conic mirror. COPIS is a suitable sensor for visual navigation in real world environment with moving objects. The paper describes a method for estimating the location and the motion of the robot by detecting the azimuth of each object in the omnidirectional image. It also presents a method to avoid collision against unknown obstacles and estimates their locations by detecting their azimuth changes while the robot is moving in the environment.>