Open AccessA Hybrid Architecture for Vision-Based Obstacle Avoidance
Author(s) -
Mehmet Serdar Güzel,
Wan Nurshazwani Wan Zakaria
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
advances in mechanical engineering/advances in mechanical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.318
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1687-8140
pISSN - 1687-8132
DOI - 10.1155/2013/697415
Subject(s) - obstacle avoidance , obstacle , computer science , optical flow , architecture , artificial intelligence , computer vision , monocular vision , mechanism (biology) , collision avoidance , real time computing , robot , image (mathematics) , mobile robot , art , visual arts , philosophy , computer security , epistemology , political science , law , collision
This paper proposes a new obstacle avoidance method using a single monocular vision camera as the only sensor which is called as Hybrid Architecture. This architecture integrates a high performance appearance-based obstacle detection method into an optical flow-based navigation system. The hybrid architecture was designed and implemented to run both methods simultaneously and is able to combine the results of each method using a novel arbitration mechanism. The proposed strategy successfully fused two different vision-based obstacle avoidance methods using this arbitration mechanism in order to permit a safer obstacle avoidance system. Accordingly, to establish the adequacy of the design of the obstacle avoidance system, a series of experiments were conducted. The results demonstrate the characteristics of the proposed architecture, and the results prove that its performance is somewhat better than the conventional optical flow-based architecture. Especially, the robot employing Hybrid Architecture avoids lateral obstacles in a more smooth and robust manner than when using the conventional optical flow-based technique