Visual Navigation With Obstacle Avoidance

International audienceWe present and validate a framework for vi- sual navigation with obstacle avoidance. The approach was originally designed in 1, but major improvements and real outdoor experiments are added here. Visual navigation consists of following a path, represented as an ordered set of key images, that have been acquired in a preliminary teaching phase. While following such path, the robot is able to avoid new obstacles which were not present during teaching, and which are sensed by a range scanner. We guarantee that collision avoidance and navigation are achieved simultaneously by actuating th camera pan angle, in the presence of obstacles, to maintai scene visibility as the robot circumnavigates the obstacle. Th circumnavigation verse and the collision risk are estimated using a potential vector field derived from an occupancy grid. The framework can also deal with unavoidable obstacles, which make the robot decelerate and eventually stop