ONE DIMENSIONAL IMAGE VISUAL SYSTEM FOR A MOVING VEHICLE

A vision system for a mobile robot 10 comprises an optical sensor subsystem 20 which generates a substantially one dimensional image of an environment, a signal processing subsystem 24 for extracting and enhancing significant vertical visual features from the one dimensional image and a feature processing system 26 which analyses rapidly and in real time the extracted features for use by a control system 28 for navigation of the robot. The optical sensor may be a line scan camera having a plurality of outputs which relate to brightness values received from the environment. Triangulation, optical flow and optical flow with log transforms methods are disclosed for processing the one dimensional image data to yield azimuth and/or distance to an object within the environment. Also disclosed is a binocular vision system which generates two, one dimensional images and a method of processing same.