Visual tracking of a moving object of a robot head with 3 DOF

Visual tracking of a moving object is one of the fundamental functions of a robot head. In order to implement this task, it is necessary to process visual images and control the head motion. Firstly, this paper proposes the computer architecture with duplex computers and dual operating systems. One computer with the windows operating system is in charge of image processing, the other computer with the RT-Linux operating system is used to control the motion of the robot head. Then, we discuss the mechanism of the robot head with three degrees of freedom, and derive the image processing algorithm. The developed robot head has the height of 0.17 [m], width of 0.15 [m], depth of 0.12 [m] and the weight of 2.8 kg. Finally, experimental results show the robot head can track a moving object precisely in 3D space.