Vision Based Navigation of an Autonomous Robot

Machine vision is a powerful tool for process automation and control. This paper describes the development of Robot System capable of capturing image through roof-mounted cameras and by detecting that image the robot can make decision to navigate. The image detection part is the machine vision part which was done in NI LabVIEW, a graphical program development environment from National Instruments (NI). Basic theoretical background on machine vision is presented at the begin-ning of this research; this is followed by a description of the vision develop-ment module in LabVIEW, and a method to communicate between a PLC and LabVIEW. The communications network uses a combination of router and microcontrollers serial communication. Router is used for the distance (d<1m), transmitting data between the robot system and the PC.