Grasping a waving object for a humanoid robot using a biologically-inspired active vision system

Grasping a waving object is a very useful behavior for a humanoid robot. This paper presents how a humanoid robot performs this behavior utilizing an active vision system. The gaze control of the active vision system is highly inspired by biological systems, and is implemented in four basic behaviors: saccade, smooth pursuit, vergence, and vestibulo-ocular reflex. This gaze control method also simplifies the visual servoing task after waving motion is detected. Waving motions are detected by optical flow with background motion detected by either motion histogram or phase correlation.