Detection of moving object by mobile Stereo Omnidirectional System (SOS)

Moving object detection with a mobile image sensor is an important task in robotics and computer vision, when considering the practical use of robotics in human environments. In this paper, we propose a robust method that detects moving objects in the environment, using the omni-directional depth information obtained by a mobile Stereo Omnidirectional System (SOS). In order to detect only the moving objects within the depth image that are obtained by a sensor in motion, we first estimate the ego-motion of the sensor, and generate a predicted depth image for the current time from the depth obtained at the previous time by only considering the ego-motion of the sensor. Then the predicted depth image is compared with the actual one obtained at the current time, and the inconsistent regions are detected as moving objects. When the sensor moves, occlusions will occur in the scene and they will cause false detections. However, these false detections can he suppressed by estimating the Occlusion regions using the ego-motion parameters of the sensor and the jump edges in the depth image. The effectiveness of the method is shown with experimental results for a real environment. (C) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.