The Robot Report publishes Mark Davidson’s article
Mark Davidson, Chief Revenue Officer of DreamVu, discusses the importance of Field of View (FOV) and why it matters for autonomous robotic navigation. In order for a robot to see objects in its environment and act appropriately, it must have complete situation awareness. One can try and achieve this by placing many different sensors around the robot to increase its FOV, however, this tends to be costly and impractical. Another popular option, Lidar, is often considered for its increased sensing range, however, blind spots still exist in the vertical and horizontal FOVs due to the rate at which the sensor scans (scanning rate). Mark introduces DreamVu’s PAL and PAL Mini, a stereo vision system with a 360-degree horizontal FOV and 100+ degree vertical FOV, as a solution for this problem. In addition to the wide FOV, PAL has zero minimum depth distance which means no blind spots. With a stereo camera solution such as this, obstacle detection and avoidance becomes much easier for the robot to handle, and at a much lower price point. This also allows the user to start with one camera with a high FOV and reduce it through software as needed. This allows for complete situational awareness around the AMR with just one or two stereo vision systems. With all of these combined attributes, the AMR can freely move in any direction with confidence, sense and avoid obstacles and robots, and detect if anything falls off the payload. These stereo systems can also be used for mapping and make a great addition to simplify any sensor stack.
