A real-time computer vision platform for mobile robot applications

A portable platform is described that supports real-time computer vision applica- tions for mobile robots. This platform includes conventional processors, an image processing front-end system, and a controller for a pan/tilt/verge nce head. The platform is ruggedized to withstand vibration during off-road driving. The platform has successfully supported experiments in video stabilization and detection of mov- ing objects for outdoor surveillance, gradient-based and correlation-based image flow estimators, and indoor mobility using divergence of flow. These applications have been able to run at rates ranging from 3 to 15 Hz for image sizes from 64x64 to 256x256.