Jia, S., et al.

Paper:

Human Recognition Using RFID Technology and Stereo Vision

Songmin Jia, Jinbuo Sheng, Daisuke Chugo, and Kunikatsu Takase
University of Electro-Communications 1-5-1 Chofugaoka, Chofu-City, Tokyo 182-8585, Japan E-mail: jia@taka.is.uec.ac.jp [Received November 1, 2007; accepted June 25, 2008]

In this paper, a method of human recognition in indoor environment for mobile robot using RFID (Radio Frequency Identication) technology and stereo vision is proposed as it is inexpensive, exible and easy to use in practical environment. Because information of human being can be written in ID tags, the proposed method can detect the human easily and quickly compared with the other methods. The proposed method rst calculates the probability where human with ID tag exists using Bayes rule and determines the ROI for stereo camera processing in order to get accurate position and orientation of human. Hu moment invariants was introduced to recognize the human being because this method is insensitive to the variations in position, size and orientation. The proposed method does not need to process all image and easily gets some information of obstacle such as size, color, thus decreases the processing computation. This paper introduces the architecture of the proposed method and presents some experimental results.

Keywords: RFID, stereo vision, probability, mobile robot, human detection

1. Introduction
Indoor environmental obstacle recognition of mobile robot is main topic in order to navigate a mobile robot to perform a service task at facilities or at home. S. Ikeda and J. Miura developed 3D indoor environment modeling by a mobile robot with omnidirectional stereo and Laser Range Finder [1]. Hiroshi Koyasu et al. developed omnidirectional stereo obstacle detection method for mobile robot moves in dynamic environment [2]. D. Castro et al. proposed LRF based obstacle detection [3]. T. Watanabe [4] developed moving obstacle recognition using optical ow pattern analysis for mobile robots. Robust recognition of humans in images is important for many applications. Detection of human body is more complicated than for objects as human body is highly articulated. Many of the methods for human detection have been developed. Papgeorgiou and Poggio [5] uses Haar-based representation combined with a polynomial SVM. The other leading methods uses a parts-based approach [6]. In this paper, a

novel method of indoor environmental human recognition of mobile robot by using RFID (Radio Frequency Identication) system with a stereo camera is proposed as it is inexpensive, exible and easy to use in the practical environment. Because the information of human being can be written in ID tags in advance, the proposed method enables the obstacles recognition easily and quickly. In order to localize the ID tags accurately, the Bayes rule was introduced to calculate probability where the ID tag exists after the tag reader detects a tag. Then stereo camera was started to processed the ROI (Region of Interest) determined by the results of Bayes rule. Because the proposed method doesnt need to process all input image, and some information of environment was got from ID tag, thus decreases the image processing computation, and enables to detect the obstacles easily and quickly. Hu moment invariants, recognition method of visual patterns and characters independent of position, size and orientation was used. This paper introduces the architecture of the proposed method and gives some experimental results. The rest of the paper consists of 5 sections. Section 2 describes the structure of hardware of the proposed system. Section 3 presents ID tag localization using Bayes rule based on RFID technology. Section 4 details the principle of the proposed method of human recognition. The experimental results are given in Section 5. Section 6 concludes the paper.

2. System Description
In our system, we developed a nonholonomic mobile robot that was remodeled from a commercially available manual cart (Fig. 1 ). The structure of the front wheels was changed with a lever balance structure to make mobile robot move smoothly, and the motors were xed to the two front wheels. It has low cost and is easy to pass over bump or gap between oor and rooms. We selected Maxon EC motor and a digital server amplier 4-Q-EC 50/5 which can be controlled via RS-232C [7]. For the controller of mobile robot, a PC104 CPU module (PCM3350 Geode GX1-300 based) is used, on which RT-Linux is running. For communication between mobile robot and mobile robot control server running on the host computer, the Wireless LAN (PCMCIA-WLI-L111) is used. KENWOOD S1000 series was used in the developed

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Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.21 No.1, 2009

Human Recognition Using RFID Technology and Stereo Vision

P C fo r S te re o V is io n

S te re o C a m e ra R F ID R e a d e r

Table 1. The specications of KENWOOD RFID system.

Ite m
F re q u e n c y C a rd M e m o ry s iz e T h e m a x im u m c o m m u n ic a tio n d is ta n c e In te rfa c e P o w e r re q u ire m e n t

S p e c ific a tio n
2 .4 5 G H z 7 2 b y te 4 m R S - 4 8 5 ,R S - 2 3 2 C D C 2 4 ( V ) 1 .0 ( A ) 2 k g 2 6 3 x 1 7 6 x 5 3 m m (W x L x H )

R o b o t C o n tro lle r

E C M o to r

W e ig h t (re a d e r) D im e n s io n (re a d e r)

Fig. 1. The developed mobile robot platform.

system. Table 1 illustrates the specications of KENWOOD RFID system. Tag reader S1500/00 communicates with tags via 2.45 GHz radio wave. Since there is a communication area between ID tag and tag reader (the communication between mobile robot controller and tag reader is via RS-232C), so if ID tag comes into the communication area while mobile robot moves to the place close to the ID tags, the ID tag can be detected and the information written in it can simultaneously be read out by tag reader mounted on the mobile robot. When the working domain of mobile robot is changed or extended, what needs to be done is just putting the new ID tags in new environment and registering these ID tags to database. It is also helpful to improve dynamic obstacles recognition (such as chair or person). Bunmblebee (PGR, Point Grey Research) stereo camera and MDCS2 (Videre Design) camera are usually used in robotic eld. In our system, we selected Bunmblebee to integrate RFID technology to localize the service mobile robot. The Bunmblebee two-camera Stereo Vision system provides a balance between 3D data quality, processing speed, size and price. The camera is ideal for applications such as people tracking, mobile robotics and other computer vision applications. Table 2 illustrates the specications of Bunmblebee stereo camera. A note computer (Intel Pentium3 M 1.00 GHz, Memory SDRAM 512 MB, Windows XP Professional) was used to process input image.

Table 2. The specications of Bunmblebee stereo camera.

Ite m B a s e lin e F o c a l L e n g th s F ra m e R a te s In te rfa c e s P o w e r C o n s u m p tio n D im e n s io n s M a ss S ig n a l T o N o is e G a in S p e c ific a tio n 1 2 c m 6 m m w ith 4 3

4 8 F P S (6 4 0 x 4 8 0 ) 6 -p in IE E E -1 3 9 4 a 2 .5 W a t1 2 V

1 5 7 x 3 6 x 4 7 .4 m m 3 4 2 g ra m s R a tio 6 0 d B A u to m a tic /M a n u a l

3. Calculating ID Tag Existing Probability Based on RFID Sensor Model

Obstacle Recognition is an important issue and a key function for the mobile robot to perform a navigationbased service task in indoor environment. We proposed the method of indoor environmental obstacles with ID tags recognition for mobile robot using RFID and stereo vision. We introduce Bayes rule to calculate the probability where the obstacle with ID tag, then recognize that the obstacle is human or not. Journal of Robotics and Mechatronics Vol.21 No.1, 2009

3.1. RFID Probability Model Obstacle recognition; specially, dynamic obstacle recognition such as chair or human person is a difcult problem. For human being, it is easy to avoid the obstacles such as chairs, tables, but for mobile robot, it is very difcult. We proposed the method of indoor environmental obstacle recognition for mobile robot using RFID. Because the information of obstacle such as size, color can be written in ID tags in advance, so the proposed method enables the obstacle recognition easily and quickly. By considering the probabilistic uncertainty of RFID, the proposed method introduces Bayes rule to calculate probability where the obstacle exists when the RFID reader detects a ID tag. In our research, for the obstacle objects like chairs and tables, we attached the ID tags on them, and the system can detect them when the mobile robot moves the place where ID tags enters the communication range of RFID reader. Simultaneously, the data written in the ID tags can also be read out. But localizing accurately the position of
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