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