Biologically inspiring robot navigation by exploiting optical flow patterns

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Description/Abstract

In this paper a novel biologically inspired method is addressed for the robot homing problem where a robot returns to its home position after having explored an a priori unknown environment. The method exploits the optical flow patterns of the landmarks and based on a training data set a probability is inferred between the current snapshot and the snapshots stored in memory. Optical flow, which is not a property of landmarks like color, shape, and size but a property of the camera motion, is used for navigating a robot back to its home position. In addition, optical flow is the only information provided to the system while parameters like position and velocity of the robot are not known. Our method proves to be effective even when the snapshots of the landmarks have been taken from varying distances and velocities.