Development of hybrid image stabilization system for a mobile robot

This paper proposes a hybrid image stabilizing system which uses both optical image stabilizing system based on EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) and digital image stabilization based on SURF (Speeded Up Robust Feature). Though image information is one of the most efficient data for object recognition, it is susceptible to noise which results from internal vibration as well as external factors. The blurred image obtained by the camera mounted on a robot makes it difficult for the robot to recognize its environment. The proposed system estimates shaking angle through EKF based on the information from inclinometer and gyro sensor to stabilize the image. In addition, extracting the feature points around rotation axis using SURF which is robust to change in scale or rotation enhances processing speed by removing unnecessary operations using Hessian matrix. The experimental results using the proposed hybrid system shows its effectiveness in extended frequency range.