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Use of character information by autonomous robots based on character string detection in daily environments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 August 2014

Kimitoshi Yamazaki ,
Tomohiro Nishino ,
Kotaro Nagahama ,
Kei Okada  and
Masayuki Inaba
Kimitoshi Yamazaki*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering, Shinshu University, 4-17-1 Wakasato, Nagano, Nagano, 380-8553, Japan
Tomohiro Nishino
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3–1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 305-8573, Japan
Kotaro Nagahama
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3–1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 305-8573, Japan
Kei Okada
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3–1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 305-8573, Japan
Masayuki Inaba
Affiliation:
Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3–1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 305-8573, Japan
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

Characters encountered in daily environments provide valuable information to human beings and potentially to automated machines. This paper describes the use of character information by robots working in daily environments. Our robot system finds and reads character strings by virtue of a recognition module that detects character candidates as closed contours in an image. The closed-contour-based method enables detection of various character strings observed from different viewpoints. To cope with tiny and distant characters, the image processing is collaborated with a camera system having a mechanical gaze adjustment. By combining the detection result with an optical character reader, the autonomous robot can provide daily assistance to humans.

Keywords

Character string detectionClosed contourDaily assistive robots
Type
Articles
Information
Robotica , Volume 34 , Issue 5: RAAD , May 2016 , pp. 1113 - 1127
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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