Experiments in Hand-Eye Coordination Using Active Vision

Robot hand-eye coordination has recently enjoyed much attention. Previous research at MIT has examined 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 paper presents work which incorporates a new active vision system which requires a minimally controlled environment, and implements methods for object tracking, robot/camera calibration, and new catching algorithms. Experimental results for real time catching of free-ying spherical balls are presented. The system was tested on underhand tosses from random locations approximately 1.5-2.5 meters distant from the base of the arm. The best performance results were found to be 70-80% success for similar tosses.