Determination of robot location using generalized cylindrical object shapes

In this paper, a new approach to the determination of robot location using the generalized cylindrical object, such as circular cylinders, elliptic cylinders, triangular cylinders, etc., are proposed. From a monocular image of the object, image processing and numerical analysis techniques are applied to extract the projection characteristics of the generalized cylindrical portion of the object, from which the position and the rotation parameters of a camera-mounted robot can be determined. Owing to the full linearity of the derivation, this approach can achieve high speed requirement. In addition, no prerequisite restriction is imposed on the image-grabbing process. Experimental results show that the location determination time is about 1.2 sec in a 33 MHz IBM compatible PC/AT computer system and the location error is less than 5% in average.