Design of a laser distance sensor with a web camera for a mobile robot

Abstract

Rozpacování přístroje a programu pro měření vzdálenosti s použitím laseru a web-kamery pro mobilního robota.

Mobile robots have become more widespread in commercial, scientific and industrial usage. Modern challenges require robots to autonomously navigate its course and being capable to avoid obstacles in unknown environment. Devices for obstacle detection and distance determination are beneficial for robot navigation. This thesis presents device and vision processing software application created for mobile robot. Designed device consists of required elements - web-camera and laser emitter, assembled together in movable frame, which can be easily connected to driven motor and to robot. Using web-camera image, the software must recognize released laser line on the surface of obstacle, and determine distance to it. The vision software is based on brightest pixel extraction from image to detect the position of laser beam in environment and applying triangulation principles for distance calculation. The precision of this approach was demonstrated by successful tests.