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Range Sensors

Reference work entry

Abstract

Range sensors are devices that capture the three-dimensional (3-D) structure of the world from the viewpoint of the sensor, usually measuring the depth to the nearest surfaces. These measurements could be at a single point, across a scanning plane, or a full image with depth measurements at every point. The benefits of this range data is that a robot can be reasonably certain where the real world is, relative to the sensor, thus allowing the robot to more reliably find navigable routes, avoid obstacles, grasp objects, act on industrial parts, etc.

This chapter introduces the main representations for range data (point sets, triangulated surfaces, voxels), the main methods for extracting usable features from the range data (planes, lines, triangulated surfaces), the main sensors for acquiring it (Sect. 22.1 – stereo and laser triangulation and ranging systems), how multiple observations of the scene, e.g., as if from a moving robot, can be registered (Sect. 22.2), and several indoor and outdoor robot applications where range data greatly simplifies the task (Sect. 22.3).

Keywords

Range Image Iterate Close Point Range Sensor Iterate Close Point Robotic Application 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Abbreviations

ASIC

application-specific integrated circuit

CP

cerebral palsy

CP

closest point

CP

complementarity problem

DARPA

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

FPGAs

field programmable gate array

GPS

global positioning system

ICP

iterative closest-point algorithm

LADAR

laser radar or laser detection and ranging

LIDAR

light detection and ranging

MLS

multilevel surface map

PC

Purkinje cells

PC

principal contact

RANSAC

random sample consensus

RGB

red, green, blue

SIFT

scale-invariant feature transformation

SLAM

simultaneous localization and mapping

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2008

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of InformaticsUniversity of EdinburghEdinburghUK
  2. 2.Artificial Intelligence CenterSRI InternationalMenlo ParkUSA

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