Image-Based Trajectory Tracking through Unknown Environments without Absolute Positioning

Abstract

This paper describes a stereo image-based visual servoing system for trajectory tracking by a non-holonomic robot without externally derived pose information nor a known visual map of the environment. It is called trajectory servoing. The critical component is a feature-based, indirect Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) method to provide a pool of available features with estimated depth, so that they may be propagated forward in time to generate image feature trajectories for visual servoing. Short and long distance experiments show the benefits of trajectory servoing for navigating unknown areas without absolute positioning. Empirically, trajectory servoing has better trajectory tracking performance than pose-based feedback when both rely on the same underlying SLAM system.

arXiv commentto be published in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics

References in corpus (5)

• Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age
• Introducing SLAMBench, a performance and accuracy benchmarking methodology for SLAM
• Good Feature Matching: Towards Accurate, Robust VO/VSLAM with Low Latency
• Navigating the Landscape for Real-time Localisation and Mapping for Robotics and Virtual and Augmented Reality
• Predictive and adaptive maps for long-term visual navigation in changing environments