POWRE: Visual Behaviors for Robotic Motion Control

Franklin W. Olin College Of Engineering, Needham MA

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-9973470 Crisman, Jill Northeastern University CISE POWRE: Visual Behaviors for Robotic Motion Control The long term objective of the proposed research is to use visual behaviors to control personal robots. The POWRE funding will help the PI to restart her research program, after she has had to take an extended leave due to medical conditions of her children. The proposed work will specifically study visual behaviors for gaze control of a robot head, navigation control of a mobile base, reaching control of a manipulator, and grasping control of a robot hand. The objectives are to: (i) determine if real-world, general purpose robotics problems can be solved using visual behaviors, (ii) discover the features of target objects that can be reliably tracked and used for visual behaviors, and (iii) discover a fundamental set of visual behaviors necessary to perform general purpose object retrieval and delivery. To meet these objectives, a general purpose mobile robot will be developed and used in daily navigation task. The robot will interact with person who will select visual behaviors and target objects from video images. A manipulator and robot hand will be used to perform experiments in visual behaviors for reaching and picking up objects. Better generic target tracking algorithms will also be developed. Finally, the idea of tracking multiple targets through image sequences will be investigated and integrated with visual behaviors.