Autonomous machine having vision system for navigation and method of using same

A method for autonomous machine navigation comprising:

• placing a ground maintenance machine within a work region defined by one or more boundaries, the machine comprising:
• two or more vision sensors, each vision sensor adapted to capture image data within a field of view (FOV) defined by the vision sensor, wherein each vision sensor defines a different FOV relative to the machine;
• and
• a controller in communication with each of the vision sensors;
• designating at least one of the vision sensors as a localization vision sensor;
• and
• determining with the controller a vision-based pose of the machine, the pose representing one or both of a position and an orientation of the machine relative to the work region, wherein determining the pose of the machine is based upon matching features in the image data received from the localization vision sensor to features associated with a previously-identified three-dimensional point cloud (3DPC) used to define the work region,
• wherein designating at least one of the vision sensors as the localization vision sensor comprises either:
• (a) analyzing the image data from each of the vision sensors;
• identifying a first vision sensor from among the two or more vision sensors, wherein the FOV of the first vision sensor contains a greater number of feature matches with features of the 3DPC than the FOV of any of the other vision sensors;
• and
• selecting the first vision sensor as the localization vision sensor;
• or
• (b) selecting which of the vision sensors has the FOV that is predicted by the controller to contain either:
• a greater number of features of the 3DPC;
• or a feature or cluster of features having a recognition score greater than a recognition score of the features or cluster of features predicted to be within the FOV of any of the other vision sensors.