Mixing Collaborative and Hybrid Vision Devices for Robotic Applications

Abstract

This paper studies how to combine devices such as monocular/stereo cameras, motors for panning/tilting, fisheye lens and convex mirrors, in order to solve vision-based robotic problems. To overcome the well-known trade-offs between optical properties, we present two mixed versions of the new systems. The first system is the robot photographer with a conventiona pan/tilt perspective camera and fisheye lens. The second system is the omnidirectional detector for a complete 360-degree field-of-view surveillance system. We build an original device that combines a stereo-catadioptric camera and a pan/tilt stereo-perspective camera, and also apply it in the real environment. Compared to the previous systems, we show benefits of two proposed systems in aspects of maintaining both high-speed and high resolution with collaborative moving cameras and having enormous search space with hybrid configuration. The experimental results are provided to show the effectiveness of the mixing collaborative and hybrid systems.