ROBOTS should have eyes in the back of their heads as well the front. Researchers in the US say a robot’s navigation skills could be vastly improved by giving it “omni-directional” vision.
A robot on the move must be able to sense whether it is travelling in a straight line or spinning on the spot. But telling the difference is difficult with just a single camera for an eye.
Yiannis Aloimonos, a computer scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park, says the best way to understand the problem is to imagine seeing the world through a cardboard tube.…
