<title>Fundamental principles of robot vision</title>

Abstract

Robot vision is a specialty of intelligent machines which describes the interaction between robotic manipulators and machine vision. Early robot vision systems were built to demonstrate that a robot with vision could adapt to changes in its environment. More recently attention is being directed toward machines with expanded adaptation and learning capabilities. The use of robot vision for automatic inspection and recognition of objects for manipulation by an industrial robot or for guidance of a mobile robot are two primary applications. Adaptation and learning characteristics are often lacking in industrial automation and if they can be added successfully, result in a more robust system. Due to a real time requirement, the robot vision methods that have proven most successful have been ones which could be reduced to a simple, fast computation. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the fundamental concepts in sufficient detail to provide a starting point for the interested engineer or scientist. A detailed example of a camera system viewing an object and for a simple, two dimensional robot vision system is presented. Finally, conclusions and recommendations for further study are presented.