A camera-based autonomous mobile robot on a simple simulated highway

Abstract

The automatic car steering technology has the potential to reduce the rate of traffic accidents, in the future. As a starting point, in this research a mobile robot, which can run between two road lines using a camera is designed. To detect the road lines in the image from the camera, Edge Detection and Line Detection method is used. The kernel used in the Edge Detection method is the Sobel kernel. The Line Detection is done by finding the coordinates of the maximum value for each column in the Edge Detection's image result. The intersection of two lines will show a certain direction of the robot to correct its direction of movement. Both methods are implemented on a wheeled mobile robot that is controlled by a microcontroller. The robot can detect the miniature road lines and correct its direction of movement so that it can run between the two road lines in parallel with the lines.