Design and implementation of an omnidirectional vision system for robot perception

To meet the demand of surrounding detection of a humanoid robot, we developed an omnidirectional vision system for robot perception (OVROP) with 5 Degrees of Freedom (DOFs). OVROP has a modular design and mainly consists of three parts: hardware, control architecture and visual processing part (omnidirectional vision and stereovision). As OVROP is equipped with universal hardware and software interfaces it can be applied to various types of robots. Our performance evaluation proves that OVROP can accurately detect and track an object with 360° field of view (FOV). Besides, undistorted omnidirectional perception of surroundings can be achieved through calibrations of both monocular and stereo cameras. Furthermore, our preliminary experimental results show that OVROP can perceive a desired object within 160 ms in most cases. As a result, OVROP can provide detailed information on surrounding environment for full-scope and real-time robot perception.