Estimating Scene Flow in Robot Surroundings with Distributed Miniaturized Time-of-Flight Sensors

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sander, Jack, Caroleo, Giammarco, Albini, Alessandro, Maiolino, Perla
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sander, Jack
Caroleo, Giammarco
Albini, Alessandro
Maiolino, Perla
author_facet Sander, Jack
Caroleo, Giammarco
Albini, Alessandro
Maiolino, Perla
contents Tracking motions of humans or objects in the surroundings of the robot is essential to improve safe robot motions and reactions. In this work, we present an approach for scene flow estimation from low-density and noisy point clouds acquired from miniaturized Time of Flight (ToF) sensors distributed on the robot body. The proposed method clusters points from consecutive frames and applies Iterative Closest Point (ICP) to estimate a dense motion flow, with additional steps introduced to mitigate the impact of sensor noise and low-density data points. Specifically, we employ a fitness-based classification to distinguish between stationary and moving points and an inlier removal strategy to refine geometric correspondences. The proposed approach is validated in an experimental setup where 24 ToF are used to estimate the velocity of an object moving at different controlled speeds. Experimental results show that the method consistently approximates the direction of the motion and its magnitude with an error which is in line with sensor noise.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_02439
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Estimating Scene Flow in Robot Surroundings with Distributed Miniaturized Time-of-Flight Sensors
Sander, Jack
Caroleo, Giammarco
Albini, Alessandro
Maiolino, Perla
Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Tracking motions of humans or objects in the surroundings of the robot is essential to improve safe robot motions and reactions. In this work, we present an approach for scene flow estimation from low-density and noisy point clouds acquired from miniaturized Time of Flight (ToF) sensors distributed on the robot body. The proposed method clusters points from consecutive frames and applies Iterative Closest Point (ICP) to estimate a dense motion flow, with additional steps introduced to mitigate the impact of sensor noise and low-density data points. Specifically, we employ a fitness-based classification to distinguish between stationary and moving points and an inlier removal strategy to refine geometric correspondences. The proposed approach is validated in an experimental setup where 24 ToF are used to estimate the velocity of an object moving at different controlled speeds. Experimental results show that the method consistently approximates the direction of the motion and its magnitude with an error which is in line with sensor noise.
title Estimating Scene Flow in Robot Surroundings with Distributed Miniaturized Time-of-Flight Sensors
topic Robotics
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.02439