Automatic detection and visual tracking of moving objects by eye-in-hand robotic systems

Traditionally, the robotic visual servoing/tracking problem has received attention from researchers for its interesting control and computer vision issues. However, many visual servoing tasks also require the ability to automatically detect moving objects. Until recently, very few efforts have been reported in the area of automatic detection of servoing targets. This paper presents a robust detection scheme for use in robotic visual servoing experiments. It detects and tracks moving objects through the use of a `figure/ground' approach. Experimentation has shown the feasibility of this approach under general conditions. This paper provides a description of our system implementation in an experimental robotic system, along with a collection of results. The paper also contains a discussion of problems and issues for future work.