Abstract
This paper proposes a navigation system for a mobile robot moving in an outdoor environment with brief route information. Our approach to visual navigation is based on the ability to find and track road boundaries in the environment. The brief route information for navigating the robot is represented with motion directions (e.g. right, left) at the intersections and metric distances between the intersections. The system consists mainly of two modules. One is to move along a road autonomously. The other is to monitor the robot actions and to navigate it so that the robot does not deviate from the route indicated by the route information. Generally speaking, it is difficult to navigate the robot in an outdoor environment since the ground is not flat and the images taken through the camera contain some noises. We have evaluated its navigational capability with experimentations in the real environment. As a result, it is confirmed that the system can robustly navigate the robot over a long path.
