An Implementation of a Monocular 360-Degree Vision System for Mobile Robot Navigation

One of the problems facing autonomous navigation is obstacle sensing and dynamic surroundings. Multi-sensor systems and omni directional vision systems have been implemented to increase the observability of robots. However, these approaches consider several drawbacks: the cost of processing multiple signals, synchronization of data collection, cost of materials and energy consumption, among others. Thus in this paper, we propose a new 360-degree vision system for mobile robot navigation using a static monocular camera. We demonstrate that using our system, it is possible to monitor the complete surroundings of the robot with a single sensor, i.e. the camera. Moreover, it can detect the position and orientation of an object from an egocentric point of view. We also present a low cost prototype of our proposal to validate it.