Understanding man-made environments using nonstructured lighting-3D world modeling for indoor mobile robots

The position of the peak of a luminance distribution on each surface gives a geometrical constraint between the surface, the viewer and the light source. If two light sources are arranged at appropriate positions with respect to a camera, the peak positions in the images directly provide the radius and center of a cylinder and the orientation and perpendicular distance to a plane. This paper describes a method for obtaining such geometrical information based on measuring the peak positions. Since the equipment setup is very simple, the proposed technique would be useful, for example, for real-world robotic application such as navigation of indoor mobile robots. The experimental results on the error of measurement show that the method is adequate for such purposes.