<title>The Robot's Eyes: Stereo Vision System For Automated Scene Analysis</title>

Abstract

The JPL Robotics Research Program is developing techniques that might be applicable in the future to planetary missions, to the assembly of large structures in earth orbit or to free swimming underwater vehicles where there is a need for the integration of a computer vision system with mechanical effectors. In each of these applications there is a need for real-time processing and a size limit on the on-board processor. To meet these objectives a robot stereo vision system was developed which maintains the image from the solid state detector television cameras in a dynamic random access memory (RAPID). The vision hardware provides, in effect, real time random access television cameras to the computer. Combining RAPID with the scene analysis algorithms optimised for the hardware provides a ten to twenty fold increase in processing speed over imaging systems which transfer the entire digital image to the computer and use the disc memory for intermediate storage. This short report describes the impact of the vision hardware on the stereo vision system and in turn the impact on the robot system.