A modular visual tracking system

Abstract

This thesis presents a real-time tracking and saccade system that is designed to be the basis for a more complete vision system for a humanoid robot. It consists of several semi-independent functional units including a tracking system, a saccade system, and a calibration system. These three units are designed to be simple and run at video rate on a single digital signal processor chip. Each system recognizes algorithmic failures in the other systems and corrects for these failures. Thesis Supervisor: Lynn Andrea Stein Title: Class of 1957 Associate Professor of Computer Science Acknowledgments This thesis would not have been possible without the support of several people. In particular, Chris Barnhart made the whole thing realizable when he let me borrow his prototype C31 board, and then didn't shout bloody murder when I completely walked off with it. It's quite possibly the most stable piece of hardware I've ever seen. A similar thank you goes to Matt Scheuring for building Odie ju...