IAES International Journal of Robotics and Automation (IJRA)

Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2023, pp. 325~331

ISSN: 2722-2586, DOI: 10.11591/ijra.v12i4.pp325-331  325

Object distance estimation using a monovision camera

Efemenah Endurance Idohen, Afolayan Matthew Olatunde, Umar Ali Umar

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

Article Info ABSTRACT

Article history: In computer vision, most monovision cameras used for estimating the position
of an object only estimate the 2D information of the object without the depth
Received May 10, 2023 information. Estimating the depth information, which is the distance between
Revised Jun 4, 2023 the target object and the camera is quite challenging but, in this paper, a less
Accepted Jul 3, 2023 computationally intensive method was used to estimate the object’s distance
to complete the 3D information needed to determine the object’s location in
cartesian space. In this method, the object was positioned in front of the
Keywords: camera at a sequential distance and was measured directly. The distances
measured in the experiment with a set of training data obtained from the image
Depth estimation were fitted into a curve using the least-square framework to derive a non-
Distance estimation linear function that was used for estimating the object’s distance also known
Distance measurement as the z-coordinate. The result from the experiment showed that there was an
Monovision camera average error of 1.33 mm between the actual distance and the estimated
Object distance of the object. Hence, this method can be applied in many robotic and
Pixy2 camera autonomous systems applications.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license.

Corresponding Author:
Efemenah E. Idohen
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University
P.M.B 1045, Zaria, Nigeria
Email: [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION
Estimating the depth information of an object from its pose in an environment is an essential part of
computer vision but with monocular cameras, it is quite difficult to estimate the object’s depth. Generally,
monocular cameras acquire only 2D information about an object from a scene by virtue of perspective
transformation which results in a loss of depth information [1], [2]. Therefore, obtaining the depth information
to have complete 3D information about the object’s pose can be useful in many robotic applications such as
pose estimation, picking and placing, and mapping. Traditional methods such as the use of Bluetooth, laser,
ultrasonic and IR sensors have been used in the past to estimate the object’s distance [3]–[5] but with the advent
of vision sensors, stereo vision and monocular vision are the only two predominant methods used for estimating
the object’s distance in image-based visual servoing. The stereo vision, which is also known as the computer-
based passive approach uses two cameras in the form of binocular structure or human eyes to estimate the
depth information of the object [6]–[8]. This can be achieved by placing two cameras horizontally apart and at
equal distances from their center points to capture 2D images of the object in their views [9]. Due to the distance
separating the two cameras, the captured images are known as disparity images and are used for computing the
depth information at the point where the field of view of the two cameras intersects. The stereo vision method
is highly accurate but requires a large number of images to be processed in order to achieve precision. It also
requires many complex computations due to the large number of images used hence, it is computationally
intensive. This method is also expensive to implement because it requires the use of two cameras. In contrast
to the stereo vision method, the monocular vision method involves the use of a single camera to estimate the
object’s distance based on the reference points of the camera’s field of view [10]. This method is fairly accurate

Journal homepage: http://ijra.iaescore.com

326  ISSN: 2722-2586

but not computationally intensive because it requires only a few image registrations that enable the computer
to process the images faster. Thus, this type of method can effectively reduce the system workload and save
the computer a longer processing time [11]. The monocular method used for visual servoing purposes is cheap
and has low handling complexity due to the use of only one camera.

2. RELATED WORK
Object distance measurement plays a vital role in the acquisition of objects’ depth information that
complements the classic 2D visual perception used for robotic and autonomous systems applications. However,
brief literature on distance estimation is presented in this section. Zhou et al. [12] used a monocular vision
method to find the position and orientation of the object at a distance of 5 m. The relative translation and
rotation values of X, Y, and Z directions were obtained through an unconstrained linear equation of rotation
and translation matrix R, T and were computed using the inverse least-square method. Krishnan et al. [13]
proposed a method of complex log mapping to measure the distance between the camera and the object’s
surface with an arbitrary pattern. The method is based on the use of two images taken at two different camera
positions that are known while moving the camera along its optical axis. The distance of the object to the
camera is therefore estimated by computing the ratio between the sizes of the object projected on the two
images.
Chang et al. [14] proposed an efficient neural network method for achieving self-localization by a
humanoid robot. Yang and Cao [15] also proposed a 6D pose estimation of an object using the Levenberg-
Marquardt algorithm to refine the result of the decomposed homography matrix. Zhang et al. [16] proposed a
method of estimating the localization of an object that is based on perspective transformation. Their method
was presented in three stages. The first stage dealt with the calibration of the camera to calibrate the intrinsic
parameters. The second constituted a model for computing the object’s distance through perspective
transformation by mapping the 3D points in the real world to the 2D image of a pinhole camera. The third
stage, which is the measurement of the absolute distance between the camera and the target object, was
achieved through the geometry formed from the perspective projections.
Muslikhin et al. [17] used a machine learning algorithm to classify the positions of the object in the
image of the mono camera and then used the k-nearest neighbors (k-NN) approach to find the nearest point of
the centroids to the closest class. Bui et al. [18] proposed the use of a single camera with a triangulation method
to measure the distance of an object indirectly. The method is such that the distance to the object is determined
based on one known angle and two sides of a triangle. Zheng et al. [19] presented a method of measuring an
object's distance by a monocular vision camera on a mobile robot. However, the distance between the mobile
robot and the target object was determined based on the sub-pixel image processing, mapping, and path
planning method. Zhu and Fang [20] initially proposed to address the distance estimation problem with a deep-
learning-based method by predicting directly the distance of a given object on red, green, and blue (RGB)
images without the use of intrinsic parameters of the camera. They further enhanced the model with a key point
regressor in which a projection loss was defined to estimate the distance of objects close to the monocular
camera while facilitating the training and evaluation tasks with extended KITTI and nuScenes (mini) datasets
of specified objects’ distances.
Vajgl et al. [21] presented a Dist-YOLO method that is based on YOLO architecture in which the
original loss function is updated to estimate the absolute distance of an object using the information from the
monocular camera. Most of the methods used for estimating the object’s distance in the literature are
computationally intensive but, in this paper, a monovision camera was used to obtain a set of image-based data
with the measured distances of the object and was computed by using a curve fitting technique to derive a non-
linear function for estimating the object’s distance.

3. METHOD
To determine the distance of the object from the camera, which is the depth information, a single
Pixy2 camera was used in this study. The Pixy2 camera is a vision sensor with an embedded image processor
that can process captured RGB images and segment them to recognize objects of different colors while using
its built-in color-based filtering algorithm called the color-connected components (CCC). As it has the
capability of tracking up to seven different colors, which are red, blue, green, yellow, orange, cyan, and violet,
it also has the functionality of tracking the object’s position in the image in two dimensions The front and back
of the views of the Pixy2 camera is shown in Figure 1.
Though the Pixy2 camera can perform other functions such as line tracking and barcode reading [22],
in this study, it will be used to train a specific object with a single color positioned at a sequential distance from
the camera to acquire a dataset for determining the object’s distance.

IAES Int J Rob & Autom, Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2023: 325-331
IAES Int J Rob & Autom ISSN: 2722-2586  327

Front view Back view

Figure 1. The Pixy2 camera

3.1. Camera set-up

To train the Pixy2 camera to acquire the visual information of the object found in its field of view, the
vision sensor needs to be installed in a position where the target object will be visible to the camera in order to
avoid occlusion. So, the eye-in-hand configuration was used in this paper. The eye-in-hand configuration is a
posture the camera takes when mounted on a manipulator and it can either be after or before the wrist of the
robotic arm [23], [24]. Figure 2 shows the Pixy2 camera mounted on the robot manipulator that is used for a
pick and place purpose.

Pixy2 camera

Figure 2. Pixy2 camera mounted on the elbow joint of the manipulator

3.2. Distance measurement using a single Pixy2 camera

To measure the distance of the object using a single Pixy2 camera, a set of training data that can be
used for estimating the object’s distance was generated first from the experiment. However, in this method, a
ripe tomato which is completely red was used as the target object in the experiment and was trained to be
recognized by the Pixy2 camera using its PixyMon software. The ripe tomato was simultaneously positioned
at a horizontal distance between 430 and 580 mm in front of the robotic arm in the real world; and a vertical
distance between 0 and 207 mm of the camera’s image height. The horizontal and vertical distance parameters
used in training the object were based on the manipulator’s length (580 mm) and the entire image height
(207 mm) of the camera. The object (ripe tomato) was placed sequentially in the camera’s field of view (FOV)
as shown in Figure 3.
However, on placing the ripe tomato sequentially in the camera’s FOV, the respective distances of the
ripe tomato from the camera’s lens were measured using a measuring tape with an accuracy of ±0.5 𝑚𝑚.
Therefore, to generate training data, the actual distances measured were recorded alongside the image data
generated by the Pixy2 camera. The image data consists of the two coordinates (x, y), the width and height of
the ripe tomato to determine the area of the bounding box as shown in Figure 4. These were estimated by the

Object distance estimation using a monovision camera (Efemenah Endurance Idohen)

328  ISSN: 2722-2586

Pixy2 camera based on its image processing and object tracking capabilities when the ripe tomato was placed
sequentially within the specified horizontal and vertical distance parameters. The training data obtained from
the experiment by placing the ripe tomato in sequential positions relative to the camera’s reference position is
given in Table 1.

Figure 3. A ripe tomato (object) placed sequentially in the camera’s field of view

Figure 4. A captured ripe tomato bounded by a box in the image to obtain the trained image data for
the computation of the object’s distance

Table 1. Data obtained from training the Pixy2 camera to estimate the positions of the ripe tomato when
placed sequentially in the camera’s field of view
Trial 𝑿𝒄 (mm) 𝒀𝒄 (mm) Width (mm) Height (mm) Area (mm2) Actual Distance (mm)
1 274 97 24 22 528 430
2 216 115 24 19 456 438
3 189 125 22 20 440 463
4 168 134 20 19 380 490
5 140 142 20 18 360 502
6 121 151 18 18 324 530
7 107 166 18 17 306 545
8 64 182 16 17 272 550
9 28 198 16 12 192 575

IAES Int J Rob & Autom, Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2023: 325-331
IAES Int J Rob & Autom ISSN: 2722-2586  329

However, to determine the object’s distance, which is the z-coordinate of the ripe tomato irrespective
of its pose in the camera’s FOV, the least-square method which takes the best-fit curve from a given dataset
with a minimal sum of deviations [25] was employed to obtain the relationship between the area of the
bounding box and the actual distance obtained from the training data in Table 1. The curve-fitting plot produced
a non-linear relationship between the actual distance and the area of the bounding box in Figure 5.

700
600
Actual Distance [mm]

500
400
300
y = 3285.4x-0.322
200
100
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Area of the bounding box [mm2]

Figure 5. The graph of the actual distance against the area of the bounding box

The non-linear function obtained from the graph is presented in (1),

y = 3285.4x-0.322 (1)

where y is the actual distance and x is the area of the bounding box. Hence, the distance is as in (2).

Distance = 3285.4(Area)-0.322 (2)

However, the relationship between the actual distance and the area of the bounding box variable in (2) was
used to estimate the distance of the object from the camera.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

To estimate the object’s distance, the distance-area relationship in (2) was used to estimate the distance
of the ripe tomato from the Pixy2 camera using the area of the bounding box and the actual distance data in
Table 1. Hence, the result was validated by determining the average error of the difference between the actual
distance and the estimated distance. It can be seen from Table 2 that the slight deviation in the estimated
distance resulted in an average error of 1.33 mm. Also, both estimated and actual distances were compared
graphically as shown in Figure 6.

Table 2. Result of the estimated distance and the average error

Trial Area (mm2) Actual Distance (mm) Estimated Distance (mm) Error (mm)
1 528 430 436 -6
2 456 438 458 -20
3 440 463 463 0
4 380 490 485 5
5 360 502 494 8
6 324 530 511 19
7 306 545 520 25
8 272 550 540 10
9 192 575 604 -29
Average error 1.33

Object distance estimation using a monovision camera (Efemenah Endurance Idohen)

330  ISSN: 2722-2586

700 Actual Distance

600
Actual Distance [mm]
500

400

300

200

100

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
Area [mm2]

Figure 6. Comparison of the estimated distance and actual distance of the object

5. CONCLUSION
The low-cost monovision camera and the least-square method used in this paper can estimate the
distance of the object from the camera irrespective of its pose in the camera’s field of view under varying light
conditions. The result from the experiment shows that the average error from the estimated object’s distance is
1.33 mm. However, since this method is capable of complementing the 2D information that can be used for
determining the object’s location in cartesian space, therefore, it can be applied to many robotic and
autonomous systems applications.

REFERENCES
[1] J. Wu, D. Yin, J. Chen, Y. Wu, H. Si, and K. Lin, “A survey on monocular 3D object detection algorithms based on deep learning,”
Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 1518, no. 1, Apr. 2020, doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1518/1/012049.
[2] R. Goroshin, “Obstacle detection using a monocular camera,” Thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008.
[3] M. S. Bargh and R. de Groote, “Indoor localization based on response rate of Bluetooth inquiries,” in Proceedings of the first ACM
international workshop on Mobile entity localization and tracking in GPS-less environments, Sep. 2008, pp. 49–54. doi:
10.1145/1410012.1410024.
[4] F. Rivard, J. Bisson, F. Michaud, and D. Letourneau, “Ultrasonic relative positioning for multi-robot systems,” in 2008 IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation, May 2008, pp. 323–328. doi: 10.1109/ROBOT.2008.4543228.
[5] G. Benet, F. Blanes, J. E. Simó, and P. Pérez, “Using infrared sensors for distance measurement in mobile robots,” Robotics and
Autonomous Systems, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 255–266, Sep. 2002, doi: 10.1016/S0921-8890(02)00271-3.
[6] M. T. Bui, R. Doskocil, and V. Krivanek, “The analysis of the effect of the parameters on indirect distance measurement using a
digital camera,” in 2019 International Conference on Military Technologies (ICMT), May 2019, pp. 1–9. doi:
10.1109/MILTECHS.2019.8870101.
[7] Z. Meng, X. Kong, L. Meng, and H. Tomiyama, “Stereo vision-based depth estimation,” in AIDE 2019: Advances in Artificial
Intelligence and Data Engineering, 2021, pp. 1209–1216. doi: 10.1007/978-981-15-3514-7_90.
[8] A. Masoumian, H. A. Rashwan, J. Cristiano, M. S. Asif, and D. Puig, “Monocular depth estimation using deep learning: A review,”
Sensors, vol. 22, no. 14, Jul. 2022, doi: 10.3390/s22145353.
[9] S. Liu, L. Zhao, and J. Li, “The applications and summary of three-dimensional reconstruction based on stereo vision,” in 2012
International Conference on Industrial Control and Electronics Engineering, Aug. 2012, pp. 620–623. doi:
10.1109/ICICEE.2012.168.
[10] A. Zaarane, I. Slimani, W. Al Okaishi, I. Atouf, and A. Hamdoun, “Distance measurement system for autonomous vehicles using
stereo camera,” Array, vol. 5, Mar. 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.array.2020.100016.
[11] Y. Pang, Y. Zhao, J. Chen, S. Wang, and H. Chen, “Viewing distance measurement using a single camera,” in 2014 IEEE 7th Joint
International Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Conference, Dec. 2014, pp. 512–515. doi:
10.1109/ITAIC.2014.7065103.
[12] T. Zhou, C. Sun, and S. Chen, “Monocular vision measurement system for the position and orientation of remote object,” in
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Sep. 2007. doi: 10.1117/12.791428.
[13] J. V. G. Krishna, N. Manoharan, and B. S. Rani, “Estimation of distance to texture surface using complex log mapping,” Journal
of Computer Applications, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 16–21, 2010.
[14] S.-H. Chang, C.-H. Hsia, W.-H. Chang, and J.-S. Chiang, “Self-localization based on monocular vision for humanoid robot,”
Tamkang Journal of Science and Engineering, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 323–332, 2011.
[15] Y. Yang and Q.-X. Cao, “Monocular vision based 6D object localization for service robot’s intelligent grasping,” Computers &
Mathematics with Applications, vol. 64, no. 5, pp. 1235–1241, Sep. 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.camwa.2012.03.067.
[16] Z. Zhang, Y. Han, Y. Zhou, and M. Dai, “A novel absolute localization estimation of a target with monocular vision,” Optik, vol.
124, no. 12, pp. 1218–1223, Jun. 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.ijleo.2012.03.032.
[17] Muslikhin, D. Irmawati, F. Arifin, A. Nasuha, N. Hasanah, and Y. Indrihapsari, “Prediction of XYZ coordinates from an image
using mono camera,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 1456, no. 1, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1088/1742-6596/1456/1/012015.

IAES Int J Rob & Autom, Vol. 12, No. 4, December 2023: 325-331
IAES Int J Rob & Autom ISSN: 2722-2586  331

[18] M. T. Bui, R. Doskocil, V. Krivanek, T. H. Ha, Y. T. Bergeon, and P. Kutilek, “Indirect method to estimate distance measurement
based on single visual cameras,” in 2017 International Conference on Military Technologies (ICMT), May 2017, pp. 695–700. doi:
10.1109/MILTECHS.2017.7988846.
[19] Z. Zheng, X. Ren, and Y. Cheng, “An object distance measuring method of monocular vision mobile robot,” International Journal
of Control and Automation, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 117–128, Mar. 2018, doi: 10.14257/ijca.2018.11.3.11.
[20] J. Zhu and Y. Fang, “Learning object-specific distance from a monocular image,” in 2019 IEEE/CVF International Conference on
Computer Vision (ICCV), Oct. 2019, pp. 3838–3847. doi: 10.1109/ICCV.2019.00394.
[21] M. Vajgl, P. Hurtik, and T. Nejezchleba, “Dist-YOLO: Fast object detection with distance estimation,” Applied Sciences, vol. 12,
no. 3, Jan. 2022, doi: 10.3390/app12031354.
[22] Pixy, “Pixy2 overview,” 2018. [Online]. Available: https://docs.pixycam.com/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:v2:overview
[23] B. Siciliano, L. Sciavicco, L. Villani, and G. Oriolo, Robotics. London: Springer London, 2009. doi: 10.1007/978-1-84628-642-1.
[24] H. Kim, C.-S. Lin, J. Song, and H. Chae, “Distance measurement using a single camera with a rotating mirror,” International
Journal of Control Automation and Systems, vol. 3, no. 4, 2005.
[25] K. Molugaram, G. S. Rao, and A. C. Shah, “Curve fitting,” in Statistical Techniques for Transportation Engineering, Ken
McCombs. Cambridge, MA, USA: Elsevier, 2017, pp. 281–288.

BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS

Efemenah Endurance Idohen is a field operation manager at Globacom Limited,

a telecommunication company in Nigeria. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering from the University of Benin and currently, he is pursuing his master’s degree in
mechatronics at Ahmadu Bello University. Efemenah is a roboticist, and his research interests
are in industrial/collaborative robotics, autonomous systems, human-machine interaction, and
artificial intelligence. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Afolayan Matthew Olatunde is an associate professor at the

Mechatronics/Mechanical Engineering Department of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria,
Nigeria. He holds a doctorate in robotics and a Master of Science degree in agricultural
engineering from Ahmadu Bello University. His bachelor's degree is in Mechanical
Engineering from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His research interests are
biomimetic robotics and mechatronic systems. He can be contacted at
[email protected] or [email protected].

Umar Ali Umar is a senior lecturer in the Mechatronics Unit of the Mechanical
Engineering Department at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He has extensive research and
industry experience in industrial automation, CAD/CAM, product design and development, and
other advanced manufacturing technology and processes. He supervised several postgraduate
students in Production Engineering and Mechatronics Engineering. He published several
academic articles in reputable journals. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Object distance estimation using a monovision camera (Efemenah Endurance Idohen)