Robotic catching and manipulation using active vision

Abstract

Robot Hand/Eye Coordination and Active Vision are both fields which have enjoyed much attention. A variety of research has been completed which examines the use of vision to direct robot manipulation. Specifically, previous research at MIT has examined the task of combining vision and manipulation applied to the task of tracking and catching tossed balls in controlled environments. Building upon the foundations of this past research, this thesis presents work which incorporates a new active vision system which requires a minimally controlled environment and implements new methods for object tracking, robot/camera calibration, and new catching algorithms. The system which is used here is composed of a seven degree of freedom cable driven arm and a ceiling mounted active vision system. The active vision system is composed of two color CCD cameras each mounted on two degree of freedom actuators. The vision processing is done using simple blob detection to locate color-keyed objects. The...