Route description by landmarks

This paper proposes a method of robot autonomous navigation along routes by landmarks. A robot continuously scans the side-view and yields an intermediate representation called a panoramic representation. The objects in the scene are segmented based upon range and color information of the panoramic representation and then, are arranged into a structure map which provides robust qualitative information on the environment structure. The landmarks are selected as objects in the structure map with distinctive features along the route. When the robot traverses along the route again with a changed speed, objects in the new scene are segmented and arranged in a new structure map. Since the relative spatial arrangement is invariant with the camera speed, the landmarks are matched with the objects in the new structure map by dynamic programming method. Further, the correctness of matching is verified using the disparity and color cues.