Design and Development of a High Speed Binocular Camera Head

In order to achieve human-like quick eye movements and image processing for intelligent mobile robots, a high speed binocular camera head is developed. The aim of the binocular camera head is to provide a platform to reproduce the human brain information processing. Two neuromorphic vision chips with lenses, which are developed imitating human retinas, will be mounted on the camera head. The camera head has an azimuth DOF for each camera and a common elevation DOF, thus there are three DOF in total. The weight of the camera head is strictly limited, since it is mounted on a mobile robot. In order to satisfy both demands for the quick movements and light weight, the camera head is designed based upon a simple parallel mechanism. Consequently, all motors are mounted on the base. The characteristics of the camera head are quickness, lightweight and simple mechanism. This paper presents the design, development and evaluation of the camera head. The inverse and forward kinematics are also discussed in this paper.