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.