HIPS-assisted target handoff between camera pairs

The requirements for planetary manipulation systems are becoming more stringent with time. Missions are moving beyond simple driving and instrument placement to include sample handling, target selection from meters away, and precision re-sampling of a location. In one of these tasks, remote target selection, the target is selected in a high-viewpoint camera pair. The rover begins tracking the target in these cameras as the rover approaches the target. When the rover gets close enough that the target is in view of the low-viewpoint cameras, target handoff occurs. Target handoff is the process of identifying the same target in each set of cameras so that the low-viewpoint cameras can commence tracking. Tracking is then done in the lower cameras until the rover is within optimal range for manipulation operations. Target handoff also has applications in areas such as surveillance, security, and multi-viewpoint tracking. Planetary manipulation systems typically employ two sets of calibrated stereo cameras to achieve precision on the order of one centimeter or ten pixels. As imprecision in handoff translates to location error of the final sample, this level of precision is not sufficient for upcoming missions. By utilizing the method of hybrid image-plane/stereo (HIPS), initially developed for visually guided manipulation, handoffs have been achieved with errors of about one and a half pixels.