The use of visual sensing for action generation in unknown environments is an attractive option due to the great representation power of vision, but it is challenging for two reasons. The representations used in vision are often not well suitable for planning, thus requiring complex learning approaches. Furthermore, an active agent needs to make decisions on-line, without the delay of o -line p...

This paper deals with the automation of dextrous grasping in a partly known environment using a stereo vision system and a multiingered hand mounted on a robot arm. EEective grasping requires a combination of sensing and planning capabilities: sensing to construct a well-adapted model of the situation and to guide the execution of the task, and planning to determine an appropriate grasping stra...

This paper describes an uncertainty model of stereo vision and its application to a visionmotion planning for a mobile robot. In general, recognition of an environment requires much computation and the recognition result includes uncertainty. In planning, therefore, a trade-o must be considered between the cost of visual recognition and the e ect of information obtained by recognition. Such a t...

In this paper, we describe a method of extending the sensor planning abilities of the “MVP” Machine Vision Planning system to plan viewpoints for monitoring a preplanned robot task. The dynamic sensor planning system presented here analyzes geometric models of the environment and of the planned motions of the robot, as well as optical models of the vision sensor. Using a combination of swept vo...

Mobile robots must cope with uncertainty from many sources along the path from interpreting raw sensor inputs to behavior selection to execution of the resulting primitive actions. This article identifies several such sources and introduces methods for i) reducing uncertainty and ii) making decisions in the face of uncertainty. We present a complete vision-based robotic system that includes sev...

Animate vision systems couple computer vision and robotics to achieve robust and accurate vision, as well as other complex behavior. These systems combine low-level sensory processing and effector output with high-level cognitive planning-all computationally intensive tasks that can benefit from parallel processing. A typical animate vision application will likely consist of many tasks, each of...

TO LEAD IS to choose. Choosing commits one’s group to courses of ac ­ tion and to consequences. In 1995 the leaders of the United States Air Force asserted that long-range planning in the Air Force was “broken” and that they would fix it. Doing so requires vision, asense of the evolving environment, and aprocess for link­ ing visions to strategies andtasks. Bureaucracy without vision mistakes a...

This paper presents an approach to Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) based on monocular vision. Standard multiple-view vision techniques are used to estimate robot motion and scene structure, which are then integrated with minimal odometric information and used to build a global environment map. Preliminary experimental results are also presented and discussed. Key-Words: Robot local...