A System to Navigate a Robot into a Ship Structure * Markus Vincze, Minu Ayromlou, Wolfgang Ponweiser, Michael Zillich Institute of Flexible Automation, Vienna University of Technology Gusshausstr. 27-29/361, 1040 Vienna, Austria, e-mail: vm@infa.tuwien.ac.at Simon Hoffgaard, Ole Madsen Aalborg University, Department of Production, 9220 Aalborg DK Carlos Beltran, Antonios Gasteratos Laboratory for Integrated Advanced Robotics University of Genova, 16145 Genova, IT October 3, 2001 Abstract Aprototypesystemhasbeenbuilttonavigateawalkingrobotintoashipstructure. The 8-legged robot is equipped with a stereo head. From the CAD-model of the ship good viewpoints are selected such that the head can look at locations with sufficient edgefeatures,whichareextractedautomaticallyforeachview. Theposeoftherobotis estimatedfromthefeaturesdetectedbytwovisionapproaches. Oneapproachsearches * This work has been mainly supported by the RobVision project Esprit 28867 and is partly supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) under grant P13167-MAT and EU-Project GRD1-1999-10693 FlexPaint. 1