Cambio: realistic three dimensional simulation of humanoids based on computer vision and robotics

Abstract

We introduce concepts and algorithms for control of visual motor commands and realistic simulation of basic abilities such as visual servoing and perception for robotics simulation. The introduced tools can also be used in a straightforward way to build computer animated devices such as as virtual agents, and avatars. We use the tools to build part of a humanoid (arms and head) robot, effectively named "Cambio". We describe Cambio's design, providing an overview on the most used feature extraction techniques for perception, discussing implementation issues. We intend to show the usefulness of a simulated platform as an inexpensive alternative for testing and developing computer vision algorithms in real-time robotics applications and its possible extensions to computer animated agents and avatars.