Non-supervised chromatic illuminant: corrector for autonomous robots

One of the well-known problems in colour image interpretation is the colour-constancy problem. Autonomous robots that use colour information to select objects or landmarks can be deceived in presence of heavy coloured illuminants. Classic chromatic filtering presupposes detailed information about light source characteristics, but this is not always possible. The presence of emergency lights or different kinds of light sources can heavily influence object colour. Retinex theory, by Land and McCann (1971), can resolve these problems. This theory gives color perception on a color space based on three brightness computed as relative reflectance along multiple exploration paths of the perceived scene. This paper considers the application of this theory in order to allow automatic colour detection in autonomous robots. The algorithm has been tested on simple coloured scenes illuminated with different light sources. The results obtained are compared.