Simulating pursuit with machine experiments with robots and artificial vision

This article describes one solution for the problem of pursuit of objects moving on a plane by using a mobile robot and an active vision system. The solution deals with the interaction of different control systems using visual feedback and it is accomplished by the implementation of a visual gaze holding process interacting cooperatively with the control of the trajectory of a mobile robot. These two systems are integrated to follow a moving object at constant distance and orientation with respect to the mobile robot. The orientation and the position of the active vision system running a gaze holding process give the feedback signals to the control used to pursuit the target in real-time. The paper addresses the problems of visual fixation, visual smooth pursuit, navigation using visual feedback and compensation for system's movements. The algorithms for visual processing and control are described in the article. The mechanisms of cooperation between the different control and visual algorithms are also described. The final solution is a system able to operate at approximately human walking rates as the experimental results show in the paper.