Method and Apparatus for Nonlinear Dynamic Estimation of Feature Depth Using Calibrated Moving Cameras

Abstract

A method apparatus estimates depths of features observed in a sequence of images acquired of a scene by a moving camera by first locating features, estimating coordinates of the features and generating a sequence of perspective feature image. A set of differential equations are applied to the sequence of perspective feature images to form a nonlinear dynamic state estimator for the depths using only a vector of linear and angular velocities of the camera and the focal length of the camera. The camera can be mounted on a robot manipulator end effector. The velocity of the camera is determined by robot joint encoder measurements and known robot kinematics. An acceleration of the camera is obtained by differentiating the velocity and the acceleration is combined with other signals.

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