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Published in IET Computer Vision
Received on 29th November 2009
Revised on 10th December 2010
doi: 10.1049/iet-cvi.2010.0046
ISSN 1751-9632
Abstract: One of the main challenges in steering a vehicle or a robot is the detection of appropriate heading. Many solutions have
been proposed during the past few decades to overcome the difficulties of intelligent navigation platforms. In this study, the
authors try to introduce a new procedure for finding the vanishing point based on the visual information and K-Means
clustering. Unlike other solutions the authors do not need to find the intersection of lines to extract the vanishing point. This
has reduced the complexity and the processing time of our algorithm to a large extent. The authors have imported the
minimum possible information to the Hough space by using only two pixels (the points) of each line (start point and end
point) instead of hundreds of pixels that form a line. This has reduced the mathematical complexity of our algorithm while
maintaining very efficient functioning. The most important and unique characteristic of our algorithm is the usage of
processed data for other important tasks in navigation such as mapping and localisation.
r = x ∗ cos(u) + y ∗ sin(u)
The variable r is the distance from the origin to the line along
a vector perpendicular to the line. u is the angle between
the x-axis and this vector. The Hough transform generates a
parameter space matrix whose rows and columns
correspond to these r and u values, respectively. Fig. 1 Input image
Fig. 5 Result of applying Hough transform on Fig. 4 is shown here Fig. 8 Final clustering and the indication of vanishing point;
Curves in parameter space are shown in hot colour format. Hough peaks are marker circle shows the vanishing point and the green points are
indicated by green squares showing the location of resulted centroids in Fig. 7
trial. The number of required iterations was also reduced. heading by finding the vanishing point, we need to have
For example, in Fig. 6 we needed to have 20 iterations to even number of clusters as we need at least one cluster
reach the well-separated clusters, when using whole pixels for each wall. Fig. 9 shows the reason for choosing four
representing the lines. It was then reduced to four clusters for the classification of our dataset which includes
iterations when only the beginning and ending pixels of the start points and end points. If we classify the dataset
each line were used. into two clusters (one for each wall), the result of final
We will call the beginning pixel of each line as the ‘start clustering on these centroids (green points) will be as
point’ and the ending pixel of it as the ‘end point’. We Figs. 9a and b. The final centroid (marked circle) in Fig. 9a
found four clusters for the set of data which included both represents the vanishing point but the same centroid in
start points and end points (Fig. 7). The reason will be Fig. b does not have the characteristics of a vanishing point
explained later. As shown in Fig. 8, the centroid of since it is not the point in which parallel lines not parallel
each cluster is used to form a new set of data for final to the image plane appear to converge. This shows that
clustering. We consider the final centroid as the vanishing finding two clusters and applying final clustering on them
point because its location is accurately the same as the fails in some cases like the one illustrated in Fig. 9b. Next
location of the vanishing point in the image. As shown in we tried an even number of clusters which was four or two
Sections 2 and 4 the final centroid has all characteristics of a clusters for each wall. The results are shown in Figs. 9c and
vanishing point. d. The resulted centroid is the vanishing point in both
Since we want to model the side walls of the corridor to corridors. We have tested this procedure in several corridors
navigate safely within the walls while correcting the and the results were as strong and accurate as in Fig. 9c and
algorithm in outdoor environments. According to results the robustness of our algorithm even when the accuracy of
shown in Fig. 18, we need only two clusters to find the canny edge detection is low or the input image is noisy.
vanishing point for outdoor cases. More work is required to Using 458 filter prior to the edge detection step enabled us
adapt the algorithm for outdoor cases but presented to import only a few numbers of edges to the Hough space
experiments in this section show the effectiveness of our which automatically decreases the processing time. The
algorithm in corridors. amount of time saved depends on the number of unwanted
edges (lines with an orientation other than 458) that varies
5 Conclusions and future works across pictures and across corridors but generally we can
save more time in more cluttered environments. It is an
In this paper, we have summarised a new approach for finding important capability for an algorithm to discard useless
the vanishing point in the corridors. Generally, there are information to avoid extra processing.
considerable similarities between the sides of corridors We used standard Hough transform for our work which is
which could be used by the robot to correct the heading. In the simplest type within this family. It is less complicated and
following paragraphs, we try to address some of the major easy to perform. One of the prior works in the field of
advantages of our algorithm in comparison with prior works. vanishing point was the research of Tuytelaars et al. [6] that
Normally, the illumination and other harmful visual events used cascade Hough transforms. It required three levels of
hit the accuracy of the edge detection and tend to poor Hough transform to find the vanishing point. Some other
understanding of the image. This difficulty is encountered researchers have created their own type of Hough
by reducing the dependency of our algorithm to the transform like Dahyot [7], who proposed a statistical Hough
accuracy of the edge detection principle. This happens transform to find the vanishing point. Some of these new
because here we deal with a set of lines instead of a single transforms have better accuracy but generally more
line. It is not like other solutions that require the exact complexity and higher cost than our standard Hough
location of a line to estimate the intersection point. transform.
According to our discussion in the introduction section, We decreased the processing time of K-means algorithm to
almost all existing methods need to find the intersection of almost 10% by choosing the beginning and ending pixel of
the lines to extract the vanishing point. This has increased each line, instead of importing all pixels located between
them. The number of required iterations was also reduced. For distance to the number of specified centroids (four in our
example, as we mentioned in earlier sections, we required to case) decreases the effect of these new lines (the lines
have 20 iterations to reach the well-separated clusters in caused by an object in the corridor) and helps to find the
Fig. 6, when using whole pixels representing the lines, but location of vanishing point accurately. Please note that it is
it reduced to 4 iterations when only the beginning and the assumption of our procedure to have enough free
ending pixels of each line were used. Most of the available space available in the corridor to move (we have
literatures that use clustering for their work have been using represented a vanishing point detection algorithm and not
clustering in Hough space or other accumulation spaces but an obstacle avoidance procedure). Fig. 16 shows the results
we performed clustering on the results of Hough transform accordingly.
(outside of Hough space). Hough transform is a time- We do not need any a priori information or a calibrated
consuming transform and adding some other tasks like camera to find the vanishing point. This capability alone is
clustering increases the cost of the transform unpleasantly an important advantage of our algorithm in comparison
(moving information from image space to Hough space and with a large number of prior works.
moving to image space again after processing is one of the Dynamic changes in environment will not affect the
reasons). The rate of saving varies from case to case but in algorithm until the changes limit the view of the camera
the best condition the algorithm works 20% faster in 10 trials. seriously. There is a same story when people exist in the
In our procedure, external objects in corridors have corridor. The robot can move until it is close to people
minimum effects on the accuracy of vanishing point which mean the algorithm cannot find the proper lines any
location, whereas they normally cause failures in most of more. It will stop in this situation until the normal condition
other solutions. This capability is achieved because of the is available again. Fig. 17 shows the related results.
unique way of feature extraction we choose for our In addition to all possible applications of the
algorithm. We ignore the general shape of the object and vanishing point, as a continuation of this research, we are
only resulted 458 lines will be considered. The nature of currently working on a system that uses real-time
clustering that is developed on the basis of minimum Extended Kalman filter-simultaneously localisation and
mapping (EKF-SLAM). The robot is equipped with a single principle in corridors. Vanishing point is used for heading
camera as a bearing-only sensor that uses unique feature correction and side clusters (the left and right clusters
detection (resulted clusters in this paper) and mapping which were required to find the vanishing point) are
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