Stereoscopic system for inexpensive hazardous area three-dimensional robot localization applications based on...

Computer vision, despite all the recent progress, still cannot be employed technically in most hazardous and harsh industrial areas. Most of the alternative solutions to this modern issue are usually unavailable mainly due to the global visual inspection solution cost. The best suitable option is the use of an incoherent optical fiber bundle (IOFB) that obviously requires a calibration step before image transmission purpose. We already presented our contribution to this topic improving the calibration method of the IOFB for image transmission, with some additional and essential steps that considerably improve the reconstructed image quality while also drastically reducing the processing time needed. We also proposed and evaluated a new full-resolution calibration method in a very recent study. We present and discuss in this paper an application using the IOFB for robot guiding in hazardous areas, based on a stereoscopic vision system. Conclusions compare the low- and full-resolution IOFB calibration methods for the depicted application and introduce some advantages of a specially designed IOFB that could perfectly fit with some industrial applications.