Method for dual-agent collaborative monocular ranging

Abstract

In unknown environments, a single monocular camera struggles to achieve absolute distance measurement due to the lack of scale information. This paper proposes a vision-based ranging system utilizing two mobile agents that collaborate through mutual calibration, coordinated observation, and triangulation to estimate the absolute distance to an arbitrary target. The system operates in three stages: cooperative initialization and baseline calibration, angular disparity measurement, and triangulation-based distance calculation. We specifically introduce a chain tracking measurement method to extend the effective field of view, addressing the challenge when the target and reference point are not simultaneously observable. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves acceptable ranging errors while maintaining a favorable balance between accuracy and applicability.