Vision System for the Navigation of a Mobile Robot

In this paper the development of an object detection system in a controlled two-dimensional space using computer vision techniques is presented. The detected objects have a rigid geometry and are exposed to real light; therefore, the system is robust to changes in lighting and shading. In order to handle the large amount of data to be processed in real time, a MyRIO device which contains an FPGA is used. This device allows communication with the LabVIEW software where the user interface resides. Using LabVIEW a tracking by color algorithm is implemented, in order to attend to a reactive agent, which uses an infrared sensor to detect the distance to an obstacle and perform the functions of foraging and storage. In order to improve performance, a supervisory system was implemented using a Kinect device that provides information relative to the position of the objects in the test area. This information allows eliminating occlusion problems.