Corridors and Doors Recognition from Detected Lines and Vanishing Point

This paper presents algorithms that implement part of a vision-based mobile robot self-navigation system for navigation within rectilinear corridors, concerned with recognition of corridors and doors in corridors. The algorithms take information about lines and an estimate for the vanishing point already determined using other algorithms (not detailed in this paper) as input. Algorithms presented use parameters empirically manually determined for the types of images in this specific application, but they can be generalized, with likely modification to the parameters. The algorithms rely on a categorization scheme for lines found to be in the image, and determination of their distance and direction (displacement) from the vanishing point. The categorization scheme and algorithms to determine the displacements were both developed for this work and are first presented. These displacements from the vanishing point, along with the categories of the lines are used in the corridor and door recognition algorithms. Sample results are shown.