New Generation Computing, 19(2001)121-137
Ohmsha, Ltd. and Springer-Verlag

Mobile Robot Navigation by a Distributed Vision System

Takushi SOGO
Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 Japan

Hiroshi ISHIGURO
Department of Computer and Communication Sciences,
Wakayama University
930 Sakaedani, Wakayama 640-8510 Japan

Toru ISHIDA
Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University
Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501 Japan

Received 16 July 2000
Revised manuscript received 30 October 2000

Abstract

This paper proposes a Distributed Vision System (DVS), which is an intelligent infrastructure for mobile robots consisting of many vision agents (VAs) embedded in an environment. The system monitors the environment from various viewing points with the VAs, maintains the dynamic environment models, and provides various information to robots. Based on this concept, we have developed a prototype of the DVS which consists of sixteen vision agents and simultaneously navigates two robots in a model town.

Keywords: Distributed Vision System, Vision Agents, Mobile Robot Navigation, Perceptual Information Infrastructure.

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