CONTACT AND VISUAL BASED ENVIRONMENT CLASSIFICATION FOR MOBILE ROBOTS

Abstract

To increase the capabilities and expand possible applications of robotic systems for special purposes, switching from the currently being adopted remote control systems to semi-autonomous systems that monitor operator actions and perform part of his functions is proposed. Moving to autonomous control systems capable of functioning in the "silent" mode, in shielded areas andbeyond the range of radio communications is proposed as a next step. Such intellectualization of on-board control systems will allow to eliminate fundamental limitations and disadvantages caused by the communication channel and ensures the implementation of robot group control. It is shown that the basis for robot autonomy increasing of on-board control systems, both for movement and tool control, is onboard environment model generation and determining the coordinates of the control object. External environment model and current coordinates makes it possible to automate the trajectory planning and movement, which ensures the autonomous functioning of robotic systems. The complex problem of environment segmentation according to geometric and ground passability is considered, taking into account the characteristics of the chassis, the geometry of the relief and the supporting properties of the ground. The existing methods are described and the results of experimental studies are given to solve the following main tasks: – classification of the operation zone according to geometric passability based data from the onboard technical vision system; – ground types recognition according to the integrated technical vision system; – using the apparatus of neural networks to improve the reliability of ground types recognition; – determination of ground reference characteristics by measuring the reactions of the chassis during movement. The promising directions for further research in integrating tactile and visual information to improve the reliability of the classification of operation zone according to the complex criterion of geometric and support passability are formulated.