Ground plane detection by fusing visual and inertial information

In mobile systems the position and attitude of active vision system's cameras can be hard to determine. Inertial sensors coupled to the active vision system can provide valuable information, as happens with the vestibular system in human and other animals. In this article, we present our integrated inertial and vision systems. The active vision system has a set of stereo cameras capable of vergence, with a common baseline, pan and tilt, and an implemented process of visual fixation. An inertial system prototype, based on low-cost sensors, was built. The inertial sensor data is used to segment the ground plane in the images. It is used to keep track of the gravity vector, allowing the identification of the vertical in the images. By performing visual fixation of a ground plane point, and knowing the 3D vector normal to level ground, we can determine the ground plane. The image can therefore be segmented, and the ground plane along which the robot can move identified.