Vision Based Obstacle Avoidance Techniques

5
Vision Based Obstacle Avoidance Techniques

Mehmet Serdar Guzel and Robert Bicker
Newcastle University,
United Kingdom
1. Introduction
Vision is one of the most powerful and popular sensing method used for autonomous
navigation. Compared with other on-board sensing techniques, vision based approaches to
navigation continue to demand a lot of attention from the mobile robot research community.
This is largely due to its ability to provide detailed information about the environment,
which may not be available using combinations of other types of sensors. One of the key
research problems in mobile robot navigation is the focus on obstacle avoidance methods. In
order to cope this problem, most autonomous navigation systems rely on range data for
obstacle detection. Ultrasonic sensors, laser rangefinders and stereo vision techniques are
widely used for estimating the range data. However all of these have drawbacks. Ultrasonic
sensors suffer from poor angular resolution. Laser range finders and stereo vision systems
are quite expensive, and computational complexity of the stereo vision systems is another
key challenge (Saitoh et al., 2009). In addition to their individual shortcomings, Range
sensors are also unable to distinguish between different types of ground surfaces, such as
they are not capable of differentiating between the sidewalk pavement and adjacent flat
grassy areas. The computational complexity of the avoidance algorithms and the cost of the
sensors are the most critical aspects for real time applications. Monocular vision based
systems avoid these problems and are able to provide appropriate solution to the obstacle
avoidance problem. There are two fundamental groups of vision based obstacle avoidance
techniques; those that compute the apparent motion, and those that rely on the appearance
of individual pixels for monocular vision based obstacle avoidance systems. First group is
called as Optical flow based techniques, and the main idea behind this technique is to
control the robot using optical flow, from which heading of the observer and time-to-contact
values are obtained (Guzel & Bicker, 2010). One way of the control using these values is by
acting to achieve a certain type of flow. For instance, to maintain ambient orientation, the
type of Optic flow required is no flow at all. If some flow is detected, then the robot should
change the forces produced by its effectors so as to minimize this flow, based on Law of
Control (Contreras, 2007).
A second group is called Appearance Based methods rely on basic image processing
techniques, and consist of detecting pixels different in appearance than that of the ground
and classifying them as obstacles. The algorithm performs in real-time, provides a highresolution obstacle image, and operates in a variety of environments (DeSouza & Kak, 2002).
The main advantages of these two conventional methods are their ease of implementation
and high availability for real time applications. However optical flow based methods suffer
from two major problems, which are the illumination problem that varies with time and the
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Recent Advances in Mobile Robotics
problem of motion discontinuities induced by objects moving with respect to other objects
or the background (Contreras, 2007). Various integrated methods for solving these problems
have been proposed; nevertheless it is still a key challenge to employ optical flow for mobile
robot navigation. Furthermore, appearance based methods also suffer from illumination
problems and, are highly sensitive to floor stains, as well as to the physical structure of the
terrain.
Consequently, while having significant performance advantages, there are certain
drawbacks which restrict the applicability of these methods. In order to solve those
challenges, a novel obstacle avoidance method is introduced in this chapter. The method is
principally designed to fuse a Scale invariant features transform (SIFT) algorithm (Lowe,
1999), and template matching with a convolution mask technique, using a Fuzzy Logic
approach. As opposed to the Appearance based methods, previously mentioned, an occupancy
map of the environment is generated with respect to the local features and a template. The
experimental results reveal that the proposed obstacle avoidance technique allows the robot
to move efficiently within its environment and to successfully attain its local goals.
This chapter is organized as follows. In Section 2, the background knowledge to the
conventional methods is briefly introduced. In Section 3, new technique is introduced.
Section 4 provides the implementation of the behaviour-based robot and the experiment
results from both the real and simulation experiments. Section 5 provides a summary of the
work.
2. Background
In this section, optical flow based navigation techniques will first be outlined, followed by a
brief introduction of the appearance based methods.
2.1 Optical flow
Optical flow, illustrated in Fig. 1, is an approximation to the motion field, summarizing the
temporal change in an image sequence. The main idea behind the technique assumes that
for a given scene point, the corresponding image point intensity I remain constant over time,
which is referred as conservation of image intensity (Atcheson et al., 2009). Therefore, if two
consecutive images have been obtained at the following time intervals, the basic idea is to
detect the motion using image differencing. If any scene point projects onto image point
( , ) at time t and onto image point + , +
at time +
, the following equation
is inferred based on the conservative of image intensity assumption.
, ,
, +
, +
(1)
Expanding the right-hand side of the Eq. 1 using a Taylor series about , , , and ignoring
the higher order terms then by rearrangement gives the following expression.
+
A simpler expression, is obtained by dividing by
(2)
throughout and movement along the
horizontal ( ), and vertical ( ) directions are u and v respectively. Having these

rearrangements and denoting partial derivatives of I by Ix, Iy and It gives the differential flow
equation shown in following expressions:
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(3)
where, Ix, Iy and It are the partial derivatives of image brightness with respect to x, y and t,
respectively. Having one equation in two unknowns
,
for each pixel is an aperture
problem of the optical flow algorithms. To find the optical flow another set of equations is
needed, using some additional constraint. All optical flow methods introduce additional
conditions for estimating the actual flow. There are several methods employed to determine
optical flow, namely: Block-based methods, differential methods, Phase Correlation and
General variational methods (Atcheson et al., 2009). Differential methods are widely used
for navigation tasks, and are mainly based on partial derivatives of the image signal and/or
the sought flow field and higher-order partial derivatives. One of those methods is used to
estimate flow vectors to steer the robots.
2.1.1 The optical flow method proposed by Horn and Schunk
Horn and Schunk proposed one of the most important optical flow methods using an
gradient based approach (Horn & Schunck, 1981). According to their methodology, a
regularizing term associated with smoothness is added to the general flow equation, as
illustrated in Equation 3, in which neighbouring pixels have the same velocity as moving
objects, so the brightness pattern of an image changes regularly. This constraint is
demonstrated by minimizing the squares of gradient magnitudes. Smoothness of an optical
flow area can also be calculated by determining the Laplacian of optical flow vectors speed
both horizontal and vertical directions denoted by u and w respectively, illustrated in
following expressions:

Where Ei=
and Es =
(4)
. The aim is to minimize the total error
given by the following expressions that includes

as the regularization parameter,
controlling the association between the detail and the smoothness. High values of makes
the smoothness constraint dominate and leads to a smoother flow
+
(5)
Horn and Schunk, can be used as the main reference to understand and solve the given error
function, from which a pair of equations for each point can be obtained. Direct solution of
these equations such as Gaus-Jordan Elimination (Bogacki, 2005) would be very costly.
Instead, an iterative Gauss Seidel, approach is used to reduce the cost and obtain the flow
vectors, as follows (Horn & Schunck, 1981):
un+1 = u
n -
n ; vn+1 = v
(6)
where Ix Iy and It are the partial derivatives with respect to x,y and t respectively, and the
superscript n+1 denotes the next iteration, which is to be calculated and n is the last
calculated result (Horn & Schunck, 1981).
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Fig. 1. Optical Flow vectors (Guzel & Bicker, 2010).

2.2 Optical flow for mobile robot navigation
Flow vectors are utilized to navigate autonomous systems based on the Balance Strategy
(Souhila & Karim, 2007), shown in the following equation, and the depth information which
is extracted from the image sequence using Focus of Expansion(FOE) and Time To Contact
values(TTC) (Souhila & Karim, 2007). The fundamental idea behind the Balance strategy is
that of motion parallax, when the agent is translating, closer objects give rise to faster
motion across the retina than farther objects. It also takes advantage of perspective in that
closer objects also take up more of the field of view, biasing the average towards their
associated flow (Contreras, 2007). The agent turns away from the side of greater flow. This
control law is formulated by:
| |
| |
(7)
where | | and | | are the sum of the magnitudes of optical flow in the visual hemi fields
on both sides of the robots body. The following expression gives the new heading angle
=
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where k, is a constant, and used to convert the obtained result to an appropriate control
parameter to steer the robot.
2.3 Appearance-based methods
Appearance based methods that identify locations on the basis of sensory similarities are a
promising possible solution to mobile robot navigation. The main idea behind the strategy is
to head the robot towards the obstacle-free position using similarities between the template
and the active images (F. Vassallo et al., 2000). The similarity between the image patterns
can be obtained by using feature detectors, involving corner based detectors, region based
detectors and distribution based descriptors (Alper et al., 2006). However, most of these
techniques consume a lot of process on time which is not appropriate for real time systems.
In order to handle this problem in mobile robot applications, algorithms are designed based
on the appearance of individual pixels. The classification of the obstacles is carried out by
using the pixel difference between the template and active image patterns.In principally;
any pixel that differs in appearance from the ground is classified as an obstacle. However,
the method requires three assumptions that are reasonable for a variety of indoor and
outdoor environments which are (Saitoh et al., 2009):
a.
b.
c.
Obstacles must be different in appearance from the ground.

The ground must be flat.
There must be no overhanging obstacles.
The first assumption is to distinguish obstacles from the ground, while the second and third
assumptions are required to estimate the distances between detected obstacles and the robot.
There are several models for representing colour. The main model is the RGB(Red, Green,
Blue) model which is used in monitor screens and most image file formats however, colour
information for RGB model is very noisy at low Intensity. The RGB format is mostly converted
to a HSV (Hue, Saturation, and Value). In HSV, Hue is what humans perceive as colour, S is
saturation and Value is related to brightness, (or HIS(Hue, Intensity, Saturation) model) and in
HIS, H and S represents the same as parameters in HSV colour models but I is an intensity
value with a range between [0,1] where 0 is black and white is 1. These colour spaces are
assumed to be less sensitive to noise and lighting conditions. The flow chart of the appearance
based obstacle detection systems is illustrated in Figure 2. The input image is first convolved
with a smoothing filter to reduce the noise effects, and then smoothed image is converted to
HIS, HSV or any related colour space with respect to the developed algorithm (Fazl-Ersi &
Tsotsos, 2009). A reference area is obtained from this image which might be any shape of
geometry such as trapezoidal, triangle or square, and histogram values of this reference area
are generated (Saitoh et al., 2009). Finally, a comparison between the reference image and the
current image is made using some predefined threshold values. For instance, assume that the
bin value, Hist(H(x, y)), of the generated histogram and the threshold value,TH, are compared,
where H(x, y) is the H value at pixel (x, y). If Hist(H(x, y)) > TH then the pixel (x, y) is classified
into the safe region, or else it is classified into the obstacle region. In order to simply the
problem, the results are represented in a binary image in which the safe path is represented
with white but the obstacles are represented with black, as illustrated in Figure 3.However,
identifying places purely on the basis of sensory similarity is too simplistic; different places
may look very similar, even with a rich sensing methodology due to lighting conditions,
shadows on illumination Furthermore, for dynamic environments there might be unexpected
stains on the ground which may be the detected as an obstacle and leads the robot to an unsafe
path. An example with respect to this case is illustrated in Figure 4.
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Fig. 2. Flow chart of the Appearance Based obstacle detection algorithm.
Fig. 3. Appearance based obstacle detection method.
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Fig. 4. Effects of lighting conditions and unexpected stains on the floor.
3. SIFT and template matching based obstacle avoidance strategy

In order to cope with the drawbacks of the conventional appearance based methods, a novel
feature matching based technique, comprising a Scale Invariant Feature Transform and
Template matching with a convolution mask, will be discussed in this section. The detail of
the control algorithms with respect to these techniques is illustrated in Figure 5. Before
introducing the proposed control algorithm and fusion technique, essential background
knowledge regarding the SIFT and Template matching will be presented.
Fig. 5. Control architecture of the obstacle avoidance system.

3.1 Scale invariant feature transform (SIFT)
The Scale Invariant Feature Transform formerly abbreviated as SIFT is an algorithm in
computer vision to detect and describe local features in images. The algorithm was
published by Lowe (Lowe, 1999a, 2004b), and since then has been accepted as one of the
most powerful local feature detection technique. The most notable improvements provided
by SIFT are invariance to scale and rotation, and accuracy in feature point localization and
matching. The evaluations carried out proposes that SIFT-based descriptors, which are
region-based, are the most robust and distinctive, and are therefore best suited for feature
matching. A summary of the SIFT methodology is illustrated in Fig. 6. (Lowe, 1999a, 2004b).
The initial state of this algorithm is Scale space extreme detection where the interest points,
which are called key-points in the SIFT framework, are detected. For this, the image is
convolved using Gaussian filters, proved the only possible scale-space kernel, at different
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Fig. 6. SIFT Methodology (Lowe, 1999a, 2004b).

scales, and then the difference of successive Gaussian-blurred images are obtained,
illustrated in Figure 7. The convolved images are grouped by octave which corresponds to
doubling the value of standard deviation of the Gaussian distribution ( ).The Convolution
of the image at scale
with a Gaussian filter is expressed as follows:
where,
, ,
, ,
=
=
, ,
(9)
(10)
Fig. 7. Gaussian images are subtracted to produce the DoG.
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When DoG images have been obtained, key- points are identified as local minima/maxima
of the DoG images across scales. This is done by comparing each pixel in the DoG images to
its eight neighbors at the same scale and nine corresponding neighboring pixels in each of
the neighboring scales. If the pixel value is the maximum or minimum among all compared
pixels, it is selected as a candidate keypoint, as shown in Figure 8.
Following steps are Key-point localization and Orientation assignment (Lowe, 1999a,
2004b). After key-point orientation has been completed, each key specifies stable 2D
coordinates, comprising x, y, scale and orientation. Finally, a signature, local descriptor, is
computed as a set of orientation histograms on 4x4 pixel neighbourhoods. Histograms have
8 bins each, and each descriptor contains an array of 4 histograms around the key-point.
This leads to a SIFT feature vector with 8x4x4 = 128 elements, illustrated in Figure 9. This
vector is normalized to enhance invariance to changes in illumination.
Fig. 8. A key-point is defined as any value in the DoG.
Fig. 9. SIFT Feature Descriptor.

3.1.1 SIFT matching
Feature vectors which extracted from the SIFT algorithm to solve common computer vision
problems, comprising object detection, 3D scene modeling, recognition and tracking, robot
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localization and mapping. This procedure requires an appropriate and fast matching
algorithm. An example with respect to the SIFT matching is illustrated in Figure 10. The
main matching algorithm is able to find each key-point by identifying its nearest neighbor in
the database of key-points from training images. The nearest neighbor is defined as the keypoint with minimum Euclidean distance for the invariant descriptor vector, as previously
discussed.However, many features may not be matched correctly due to background clutter
in natural images or may not have correct match in the training database, and hence,
mismatches should be discarded in order to obtain accurate results. Global thresholding on
distance to the closest feature does not perform well, as some descriptors are much more
discriminative than others. Alternatively, a more effective measure is obtained by
comparing the distance of the closest neighbor to that of the second-closest neighbor, which
performs well. An appropriate threshold value regarding this comparison, called distance
ratio, is employed to reject false matches while increasing the correct matches. This value
varies from 0.1 to 0.9, depending on the application type. In this case, 0.7 is employed with
respect to the experimental results, which eliminates %90 of the false matches while
discarding almost %10 correct matches. In addition, to reject rest of all false matches, an
essential statistical method is applied to the matching space, fundamentally using the rate
between scale and orientation parameters of the feature vectors. According to this method,
even though the matching is validated between any two feature vectors, if the scale or the
orientation parameter rate between them is more than a threshold value, matching is
discarded; this procedure performs robustly to decrease false matches over all data sets
(Lowe, 1999a,2004b).
Fig. 10. SIFT matching.
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3.2 Template matching

Template matching is a simple and popular technique in computer vision and image
processing to find small parts of an image which match a template image. It can be used in
mobile robot navigation or as a way to detect edges or objects in images; an example with
respect to this technique is illustrated in Figure 11. A basic method of template matching
uses a convolution mask which can be easily performed on grey images. The convolution
output will be the highest at places where the image structure matches the mask structure,
i.e. where large image values get multiplied by large mask values. This method is normally
implemented by first picking out a part of the search image to use as a template.
Fig. 11. Template Matching.

For instance, the input and output images are called I(x, y) and O(x, y) respectively, where
(x, y) represent the coordinates of each pixel in the images and the template is called T(xt,
yt), where (xt, yt) represent the coordinates of each pixel in the template. The technique
simply moves the centre of the template T(xt, yt) over each (x, y) point in the search image
and calculates the sum of products between the coefficients in I(x, y) and T(xt, yt) over the
whole area spanned by the template. As all possible positions of the template with respect to
the Input image are considered, the position with the highest score is the best position, and
which is represented in the output image. There are several techniques to handle translation
problem; these include using SSD (Sum of squared differences), CC (Cross Correlation) and
SAD (Sum of absolute differences) (Wen-Chia & Chin-Hsing, 2009). One of the most
powerful and accurate of those is CC, which basically measures the similarity of two
variables and defined as follows (9):
=
(11)
Where N is the template image size; and represents average gray level in the template
and source image respectively. The goal is to find the corresponding (correlated) pixel
within a certain disparity range that minimizes the associated error and maximizes the
similarity. This matching process involves computation of the similarity measure for each
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disparity value, followed by an aggregation and optimization step (Zitov & Flusser, 2003).
An example related to correlation based technique is illustrated in Figure 12.
Fig. 12. Correlation technique based Template Matching.

3.3 Obstacle avoidance using SIFT and appearance based
Appearance based methods have significant processing and performance advantages which
make them a good alternative for vision based obstacle avoidance problems. However as
mentioned previously, there are certain drawbacks, which restricts the applicability of these
methods. In order to handle these drawbacks, the results of the conventional method is
improved by using the results of SIFT based feature matching approach. The flowchart
diagram of the proposed algorithm is illustrated in Figure 13. First the acquired image is
smoothed using a Gaussian filter to eliminate the noise in the image. Then a copy of the
original image is converted to PGM image format which is required to carry out the SIFT
matching process. Both images are divided into 16 sub-images composed of 4436 pixels.
For each sub images, template matching using cross correlation and SIFT matching are
performed against reference images, illustrating the safe route, simultaneously. The results
for each segment are fused using fuzzy logic to build up a sufficiently accurate occupation
map of the environment.
The robot, which employs a Subsumption Architecture (Brooks, 1986), is successfully
directed along a collision-free path using this map. To evaluate the performance of the
proposed algorithm, it is applied to a test case, as illustrated in Figure 14. The matching
results, shown in Figure 15, indicate that both techniques generate similar results under
ideal conditions, involving low illumination changes and flat ground. However, template
matching may fail to provide accurate matching results against illumination problem, and
non-flat surfaces. In order to handle these cases, SIFT matching provides a reliable matching
strategy, which is able to match the extracted features, invariant to scale, orientation, affine
distortion, and partially invariant to illumination changes, with high accuracy. An example
illustrating this condition can be seen in Figure 16, comprising 9th and 10th sub-image
sequences. Despite the illumination problem and non-flat ground, the SIFT matching
performs well for these cases illustrated in Figure 17. Consequently; the results indicate that
instead of using each method separately, fusion of them generates more reliable results. A
fuzzy logic based approach with respect to this fusion procedure will be discussed in the
following section.
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Fig. 13. An example from the testing environment.
Fig. 14. An example from the testing environment.
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Fig. 15. Comparison of two algorithms.
(a) 9th sub image
(b) 10th sub image
Fig. 16. Matching results of two algorithms.
Fig. 17. False matching generated by SIFT matching.
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3.4 Fuzzy logic

Fuzzy logic (FL) is a form of many-valued logic derived from fuzzy set theory to deal with
reasoning that is robust and approximate rather than brittle and exact. In contrast with twovalued Boolean logic, FL deals with degrees of membership and degrees of truth. FL uses
the continuum of logical values between 0 (completely false) and 1 (completely true). FL has
been utilized as a problem-solving control system by several researchers for different
problems. Since, FL lends itself to implementation in systems ranging from simple, small,
embedded micro-controllers to large, networked, multi-channel PC or workstation-based
data acquisition and control systems.
FL is fundamentally easy to implement and provide faster and more consistent results than
conventional control methods. In this study, a FL based control system based on the
Mamdani method is designed to fuse given algorithms. The basic configuration of a fuzzylogic system is composed of three parts: Fuzzification, Inference Mechanism and Deffuzification
(Driankov, 1987). These will be presented and associated with the fusion problem in the
following parts.
3.4.1 Fuzzification
Fuzzfication comprises a scale of transformation of input data of a current process into a
normalised domain. This process requires the identification of two parts: the first part
defines the fuzzy variables that correspond to the system input variables. The second part is
to define the fuzzy sets of the input variables and their representative membership functions
including the ranges of the data. Membership function, may cross the boundary of another
fuzzy membership function. Each membership function may be triangular, a trapezoidal or
bell shaped, as illustrated in Figure 18. The choice of the fuzzy sets is based on expert
opinion using natural language terms that describe the fuzzy values. In this study triangle
and trapezoid models are utilized to design membership functions of input and output
values.
Fuzzy logic uses intersection, union, and complement operations to represent the standard
common operators of AND, OR, and NOT, respectively. The most common method used to
calculate intersection and union operations are the Minimum and Maximum functions. For
the fuzzy sets M and N which are subsets of the universe X, the following definitions are
proposed to represent the AND, OR, and NOT operators, respectively (Ross & Hoboken,
2004) (see Figure 19).
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 18. Membership function shapes, (a) Triangular, (b) Trapezoidal, (c) Gaussian.
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The triangular function has three parameters which can be defined as follows:
, <
, <
(12)
,
, >

The trapezoidal function incorporates four parameters can be represented as:
, <
, <
,
, <
(13)
, >
3.4.2 Inference mechanism

The generation of the fuzzy rules is a first step which depends on the knowledge and
experience of the human operators, the fuzzy model of the plant concerned, and an analysis
of the system. The rule-base is composed of two parts namely, the IF-part and the THENpart. The IF-part is the antecedent part where rules are defined to describe the system state
in terms of a combination of fuzzy propositions while the THEN-part is the consequent part
which forms the desired conclusion of the output variable. Afterwards, fuzzy inference
provides the conclusion of the rule-base and forms the intermediate stage between the
fuzzification and defuzzification of the fuzzy system. There are two methods used to find
the rules conclusion namely Max-Min inference and Max-Product inference. Max-Min
utilizes the Minimum operator to combine the antecedent of the IF-THEN rules which
produces modified fuzzy sets for the outputs. These modified sets are then combined using
the Maximum operator and Max-Product inference and utilizes the standard Product
operator to combine the antecedent of the IF-THEN rules. Then the Maximum operator is
used to combine these modified sets (Ross & Hoboken, 2004).
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 19. Fuzzy Operators, (a) AND, (b) OR, (c) NOT
3.4.3 Defuzzification
Defuzzification is the process of mapping from a space of inferred fuzzy control action to a
space of non-fuzzy control actions where the calculated crisp value is that which best
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represents the inferred control action. Several methods can be used to calculate this crisp
value such as the Centre-of-Area, Centre-of-Largest-Area, Centre-of-Sums, and Mean-ofMaximum. These methods are based on two basic mechanisms: Centroid and Maximum.
The centroid methods are based on finding a balance point while the Maximum methods
search for the highest peak of weight (area) of each fuzzy set (Ross & Hoboken, 2004).
Centre-of-Sum is used in this study which is faster than many defuzzification methods, and
is not restricted to symmetric membership functions. This process performs the algebraic
sum of individual output fuzzy sets instead of their union, illustrated in the following
equation:

(14)
3.4.4 Fusion of algorithms with fuzzy logic

The fundamental architecture of the proposed system is illustrated in Figure 20. The FL
controller has two inputs, namely SIFT and Correlation which involves matching strength
and similarity rate respectively. The output of the controller generates an appropriate
turning rate (w) to avoid obstacle. In order to adapt the results of vision based algorithms
efficiently as well as to operate the robot smoothly, the image is divided into n clusters (subimages), based on the resolution of the image, its parts, and for each cluster a fuzzy fusion
algorithm is applied. SIFT matching value of each cluster is rescaled by multiplying with n
which normalizes the input for Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). Final turning rate is calculated
to sum up all clusters, considering the sign of each part which is defined as follows:
=
(15)
Fig. 20. Architecture of Fuzzy control system for fusing operation.

To generate a value of turning rate (w), a Max-Min type FIS and a Centre-of-Sums
defuzification method were used, as previously discussed. The first step is to design
membership functions for fuzzification and defuzzification processes. While, several
researchers utilize different membership function shapes regarding to the problem in
various applications. The trapezoidal and triangular shapes have been selected in this work
to simplify the computation. However, it should be noted that there are no precise methods
to adjust the membership functions. Table 1 provides an example of the selection of the
fuzzy terms that describe linguistic variables used in this study. For this study three
membership functions are defined namely: SIFT (sm), Correlation (cs) and Turning Rate (w).
SIFT function, representing the matching strength between the reference image and the
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current image, is illustrated in Figure 21(a). Whereas the correlation function represents the
similarity between the reference and current images, as illustrated in Figure 21(b). Turning
Rate is the output function which represents the angular velocity value to steer the robot
whilst avoiding obstacles (see Figure 22). The next step is to design appropriate fuzzy rules
depending on the detail of each Fuzzy Inference System (FIS). A set of experiments were
carried out until the outputs are judged to satisfy each different situations. Table 2 displays
the fuzzy rules for the given problem.
Linguistic Variables
Linguistic Terms
SIFT
Weak, Medium, Strong
Correlation
Weak, Medium, Strong
Turning Rate
Straight, Less, Medium, Sharp
Table 1. Linguistics variables and their linguistics terms.

Inputs
Correlation (cs)
SIFT (sm)
Weak
Medium
Strong
Weak
Sharp
Medium
Less
Medium
Sharp
Medium
Straight
Strong
Medium
Less
Straight
Table 2. Fuzzy rule-base for Turning rate (w).

Test results lead to tune the system by changing rules, adjusting the membership functions
shapes of both input and outputs. Once the procedure has been run several times, a
consistent system is attained. The following section will integrate the proposed algorithm to
a behavioral based architecture.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 21. Membership function, (a) input SIFT matching, (b) input Correlation.
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Fig. 22. Membership function, output Turning rate.
4. Evaluation and implementation of the proposed system

In order to evaluate the performance of the algorithm, it is integrated using a behavioral
based architecture. There are several approaches to designing a behavioural-based
architecture depending on the required task. In this study, the architecture has been
designed based on the subsumption architecture in which each layer or behaviour
implements a particular goal of the robot and higher layers are increasingly abstract. Each
layers goal subsumes that of the underlying layer, and their interaction with each other will
be illustrated by using finite state machines (FSM) which defines several states (behaviours)
that represents a current situation for the robot. Certain events from the outside of the world
can change the state. For instance, the robot could have a Goto state whereby it is moving
about the environment trying to get closer to its goal. When any obstacle is detected nearby,
the state may change from Goto to Obstacle Avoidance, and the avoidance algorithm will
move the robot away from the obstacle. When the obstacle has been avoided, the robot state
will change back to the Goto. The architecture, designed for this study, comprises three
behaviors, namely: Goto, Avoid_ Obstacle and Finish. Goto behavior steers the robot to a
specific goal position, Avoid_Obstacle behaviour utilizes the proposed vision based intelligent
algorithm to avoid obstacles, and Finish behavior is merely enabled after the goal is found,
and the robot is stopped. FSM diagram of the system is illustrated in Figure 23.
The system was developed using a Pioneer 3-DX mobile robot, with an on-board
IntelPentium 1.8 GHz (Mobile) processor, and includes 256 Mbytes of RAM memory, as
shown in Figure 24 (a). The mobile robot used in this study has been developed as a part of
the Intelligent Robot Swarm for Attendance, Recognition, Cleaning and Delivery (IWARD)
project. An Axis-213 camera, 25 frame rate, was integrated into this system. The software
architecture of the proposed system is supported by CIMG Library and Player Architecture,
which are open-source software projects. All experiments were conducted in an area of the
Robotics and Automation Research Laboratory of Newcastle University, which has physical
dimensions of 15.60m x 17.55m, as illustrated in Figure 24 (b). The camera tilted down 30
degrees to detect the floor precisely, and a reference image was taken from this
environment. To evaluate the performance of the system, several different scenarios were
performed and four of them will be discussed in this section.
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Fig. 23. FSM diagram of the behavioral architecture.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 24. Test environment, (a) Pioneer 3-DX robot with Axis-213, (b) Robotics and
Automation Laboratory
Scenario 1: The mobile robot is required to navigate from Start Position (-6, 0) along a
forward direction in a partially cluttered enviorement and avoids one obstacle located along
its path as shown in Figure 25 (a). Performance of the image processing algorithms during
the task is given Figure 25 (b). The robots GoTo behaviour steers the robot forward
direction.
Scenario 2: The mobile robot navigates from Start Position (-6, 0) along a forward direction
in a partially cluttered enviorement and has to avoid two obstacles located along its path as
shown in Figure 26 (a) and evaluation of the image processing algorithms illustrated in
Figure 26 (b). The robots GoTo behaviour steers the robot forward direction.
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Scenario 3: The mobile robot navigates from Start Position (-7, 0) along a forward direction,
two obstacles located on both sides of its path as shown in Figure 27 (a). Performance of the
image processing algorithms are illustrated in Figure 27 (b). The robots GoTo behaviour
steers the robot forward direction.
Scenario 4: The mobile robot is required to navigate from Start Position (-6, 0) to the Goal
Position (3, 0.5) in a partially cluttered enviorement as shown in Figure 28(a). Performance
of the image processing algorithms during the task is given Figure 28 (b). The robots GoTo
behaviour steers the robot to a specific position which evaluates the performance of the
obstacle avoidance algortihm with a Wavefront path planning algorithm (Barraquand &
Latombe, 1991).
Figure 25 (a) presents the navigation results for scenario 1, in which the robot steers forward
until it percives the obstacle. The robot avoids the obstacle succesfully and then keeps going
forward until it detects the wall, after which it avoids the wall and continues heading
forward until it encounters the door. The robot succesfully avoids the door and continues
moving.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 25. Scenario 1, (a) Estimated Trajectory, (b) Performance of the image processing
algorithms.
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(a)
(b)
Fig. 26. Scenario 2, (a) Estimated trajectory, (b) Performance of the image processing
algorithms.
Figure 26(a) displays the test results for scenario 2. Two obstacles are located along the
robots path in the forward direction. The robot navigates until it detects the first obstacle,
then it avoids the obstacle and steers forward. Having detected the wall, the robot ceases
forward motion and avoids the wall, after which, it moves forward until it detects the
second obstacle, which it avoids succesfully. Subsequently, the robot avoids the door and
the wall respectively.It finally moves forward until it is ceased. The third simulation is given
Figure 27(a) where the robot attempts to move forward while passing the gap between two
obstacles. It keeps moving forward until the obstacles are detected, initially turns left,
followed by a right maneuver. After the robot succesfully avoids the objects it then resumes
its path and continues moving forward.
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(a)
(b)
algorithms.
Figure 28(a) displays the test results for scenario 4. The aim of this scenario is to test the
avoidance strategy with a Wavefront path planning algortihm (Barraquand & Latombe,
1991) provided by the Player Architecutre. The robot navigates towards the first waypoint
until it perceves the obstacle. The robot avoids the obstacle and resumes its desired path. As
there are no obstacles located along the rest of its path to the goal, the robot, therefore
navigates directly to its goal.
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(a)
(b)
algorithms.
5. Conclusion
The aim of this research was that it should be possible to develop a robust intelligent vision
based obstacle avoidance system that can be adapted to realistic navigation scenarios. Most
of the previously proposed techniques suffer from many problems. One of the most popular
of those is Apperance-based methods which basically consist of detecting pixels different in
appearance than the ground and classifying them as obstacles. Conventional Appearance-
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based methods utilize simple template matching techniques which are fast but highly
sensitive to lighting conditions and structure of the terrains. In addition, Optical flow-based
methodologies,, the pattern of apparent motion of objects in a visual scene caused by the
relative motion relying on apparent motion, are also highly sensitive to lighting conditions
and suffer from nose.
To overcome those problems, a new obstacle avoidance method has been proposed which is
inspired from feature matching principal. SIFT-based descriptors outperform other local
descriptors on both textured and structured scenes, with the difference in performance
larger on the textured scene. Accordingly, conventional SIFT algorithm, which is able to
perform with high accuracy and reasonable processing time, is employed to match images,
and it is finally adapted to an obstacle avoidance technique. According to the techniques,
reference image, presenting the free path, is matched with the current image during the
navigation to estimate the steering direction. However, preliminary experimental results
reveals that despite the SIFT algorithm performs better than conventional methods with
stained environment and compensates lighting failures, they may fail or produce several
mismatched features due to low resolution or vibration caused by navigation over rough
terrains. Therefore instead of using each method individually, conventional template
matching method and SIFT-based descriptor are fused by using an appropriate Fuzzy Fusion
algorithm which increases the accuracy and compensates the errors caused by lighting
conditions and stains.
In order to verify the performance of the proposed obstacle avoidance algorithm, Real
experiments to guide a Pioneer 3-DX mobile robot in a partially cluttered environment are
presented, Results validate that proposed method provides an alternative and robust
solution for mobile robots using a single low-cost camera as the only sensor to avoid
obstacles.
6. References
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www.intechopen.com

Edited by Dr. Andon Topalov
ISBN 978-953-307-909-7
Hard cover, 452 pages
Publisher InTech
Published online 14, December, 2011
Published in print edition December, 2011

Mobile robots are the focus of a great deal of current research in robotics. Mobile robotics is a young,
multidisciplinary field involving knowledge from many areas, including electrical, electronic and mechanical
engineering, computer, cognitive and social sciences. Being engaged in the design of automated systems, it
lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computational vision, and robotics. Thanks to the numerous
researchers sharing their goals, visions and results within the community, mobile robotics is becoming a very
rich and stimulating area. The book Recent Advances in Mobile Robotics addresses the topic by integrating
contributions from many researchers around the globe. It emphasizes the computational methods of
programming mobile robots, rather than the methods of constructing the hardware. Its content reflects
different complementary aspects of theory and practice, which have recently taken place. We believe that it will
serve as a valuable handbook to those who work in research and development of mobile robots.
How to reference
In order to correctly reference this scholarly work, feel free to copy and paste the following:
Mehmet Serdar Guzel and Robert Bicker (2011). Vision Based Obstacle Avoidance Techniques, Recent
Advances in Mobile Robotics, Dr. Andon Topalov (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-307-909-7, InTech, Available from:
http://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-advances-in-mobile-robotics/vision-based-obstacle-avoidancetechniques
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