Perceptual navigation strategy: a unified approach to interception of ground balls and fly balls

In previous work, we demonstrated the feasibility of perceptual navigation algorithms used to intercept fly balls. In this paper we expand the optical acceleration cancellation heuristic to also intercept ground balls. We used computer simulations and experiments with mobile robots with various bail trajectories and different initial positions of the fielder to test our new model. A new robotic system with improved vision and faster processing was developed for experimentally intercepting ground balls. The results support the generality of viewer based interception heuristics for both fly balls and ground balls.