A. A. Argyros, K. E. Bekris, S. C. Orphanoudakis, and L. E. Kavraki, “Robot Homing by Exploiting Panoramic Vision,” Autonomous Robots, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 7–25, 2005.
We propose a novel, vision-based method for robot homing, the problem of computing a route so that a robot can return to its initial home position after the execution of an arbitrary prior path. The method assumes that the robot tracks visual features in panoramic views of the environment that it acquires as it moves. By exploiting only angular information regarding the tracked features, a local control strategy moves the robot between two positions, provided that there are at least three features that can be matched in the panoramas acquired at these positions. The strategy is successful when certain geometric constraints on the configuration of the two positions relative to the features are fulfilled. In order to achieve long-range homing, the features
Publisher: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10514-005-0603-7
PDF preprint: http://kavrakilab.org/publications/argyros-bekris2005robot-homing-by.pdf