Visual routines for mobile robots: Experimental results

In this paper, we present a set of visual related routines. Our objective is to provide a mobile robot with the visual capabilities necessary to acquire information to execute a given command. We study a generic problem that we call the pickup and delivery problem, in which the robot is commanded to go to some location, pick up an object, and deliver it somewhere else. The concept of visual routines consists of having a set of primitive routines that, combined in a specific way, result in the exhibition of a complex behavior. Consistent with this idea, our approach is to develop routines to cope with some visual problems that arise when a mobile robot navigates in a given environment. Among others, we deal with issues that arise during robot self-localization and obstacle avoidance. A prime assumption that we make is that the environment provides a fixed referential frame. The robot uses this information to adjust itself to the given environment.