Mobile robot vision systems are mainly used in the following three aspects:
1. Use visual inspection to inspect products instead of human visual inspection. This includes: shape inspection, which involves checking and measuring the geometric dimensions, shape, and position of parts; defect inspection, which involves checking whether parts are damaged or scratched; and completeness inspection, which involves checking whether all parts on a component are present.
2. Identify each component to be assembled, determine its spatial position and orientation, guide the robot's hand to accurately grasp the required parts, and place them in the designated position to complete the sorting, handling, and assembly tasks.
3. Navigate mobile robots by using a vision system to provide them with external information about their environment, enabling them to autonomously plan their routes, avoid obstacles, safely reach their destination, and complete their assigned tasks.
The first two fall under the category of industrial robots. With the development of technology, researchers have also proposed the concept of visual servoing. Visual navigation, whether autonomous, semi-autonomous, or the earliest remote control method, is an interaction process between the actor (subject) and the environment (object) to complete a certain task.
Nevertheless, vision for mobile robots has not yet reached the level of importance that vision holds for humans, largely due to the imperfections in visual information processing theories and methods. While cameras can scan millions or even tens of millions of pixels of environmental images in a very short time, surpassing even the current information-gathering capabilities of the human eye, their processing methods and speed are far inferior to those of humans.
However, it is reasonable to believe that with the advancement of microelectronics technology and the development of computer vision, the visual functions of mobile robots will become increasingly powerful, and the proportion of machine vision in the information perception of mobile robots will also increase.
