View-based approach to robot navigation

Recently, view-based or appearance-based approaches have been attracting the interests of computer vision research. Based on a similar idea, we have proposed a view-based navigation method using a model of the route called the "view sequence." It contains a sequence of frontal views along a route memorized in the teaching run, and the recognition of the environment is realized based on the matching of the current view and memorized view sequence. In this paper, we discuss the required characteristics of the view for the view sequence, and evaluate our former method of generating views. Then we confirm that the stereo disparity satisfies the requirement of the view sequence through an experiment, and the disparity view sequence is applied for outdoor navigation. The experimental results indicate such views other than normal camera images can be utilized for our view-based navigation method.