The DSP based catcher robot system with stereo vision

The TI DSP (TMS320DM642 EVM) is used as the computation platform in our catcher robot system with two CCDs as source of the stereo vision. The system will separate the thrown-in target from the paired images and then calculate the centroid coordinates of each target image, thereby determining the space location of the object. The Lagrange interpolation formula and the linear function X = a Z + b are used to simulate the ball trajectory and predict the catch position. After that, the control commands are sent by the RS-232 to the 2-D robot arm so as to catch the object at the expected location. This catcher robot system can catch the ball thrown to it from four meter away with a success rate of 65%. In the future, we will implement the robot catcher techniques on our adult-size humanoid robot.