RAFI - A Stereo Vision Based Autonomous Mobile Area Mapping Robot with 16 DOF

RAFI is a self-driven mapping robot with 16 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF). Its software development,structural and electrical design and mechanical construction are presented in this paper. RAFI moves withwheels having differential type motion with 2DOF. The head has 3 DOF sufficient for volumetric mappingby rotating the head in different directions and both hands have 5 DOF to empower its grip and carrying.An 8-bit microcontroller is used to control all the motors. 4 Ultrasonic-rangefinders have been used forobstacle-detection and avoidance which are also interfaced with the same microcontroller. Its head isequipped with two identical webcams for stereoscopic vision for generating 3D map of the field of viewafter generating disparity map. To optimize the computational speed and mapping accuracy images of640×480 resolution are 85% compressed and dynamic programming with image pyramiding by quadpyramidwithout sub-pixel estimation is pursued.