Non-contact sensing system for telerobotic applications

The work presented here describes a novel vision-based motion detection system for telerobotic operations. The system uses a CCD camera and image processing to detect the motion of a master robot or operator. Color tags are placed on the arm and head of a human operator to detect the up/down, right/left motion of the head as well as the right/left motion of the arm. The motion of the color tags are used to actuate a slave robot or a remote system. The determination of the color tags' motion is achieved through image processing using eigenvectors and color system morphology. Through inverse dynamics and coordinate transformation, the relative head, shoulder, and wrist rotation angles are determined. A program is used to transform this motion data into motor control commands and transmit them to a slave robot or remote system through wireless internet. The system performed well even in complex environments with errors that did not exceed 2 pixels with a response time of about 0.1 seconds. The results of the experiments are available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFxLaVWE3f8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nvRcOzlWHw