Automated tracking and grasping of a moving object with a robotic hand-eye system

An attempt to achieve a high level of interaction between a real-time vision system capable of tracking moving objects in 3-D and a robot arm with gripper that can be used to pick up a moving object is described. The interplay of hand-eye coordination in dynamic grasping tasks such as grasping of parts on a moving conveyor system, assembly of articulated parts, or for grasping from a mobile robotic system is explored. The goal is to build an integrated sensing and actuation system that can operate in dynamic as opposed to static environments. The system built addresses three distinct problems in using robotic hand-eye coordination for grasping moving objects: fast computation of 3-D motion parameters from vision, predictive control of a moving robotic arm to track a moving object, and interception and grasping. The system operates at approximately human arm movement rates. Experimental results in which a moving model train is tracked, stably grasped, and picked up by the system are presented. The algorithms developed to relate sensing to actuation are quite general and applicable to a variety of complex robotic tasks