Visual behaviours for binocular tracking

This paper presents a binocular tracking system based on the integration of visual behaviours. Biologically motivated behaviours, vergence and pursuit, cooperate as parallel, complementary and highly coupled processes in the tracking system, simplifying the acquisition of perceptual information and system modeling and control. The use of a space variant image representation and low-level visual cues as feedback signals in a closed loop control architecture, allow real-time and reliable performance for each behaviour, despite the low precision of the algorithms and modeling errors. The behaviours are integrated and the overall system is implemented in a stereo head running at real-time (12.5 Hz), without any specific processing hardware. Results are presented for objects of different shapes and motions, illustrating that tracking can be robustly achieved by the cooperation of purposively designed behaviours, tuned to specific subgoals.