Intelligent robotics has become the focus of extensive research activity. This effort has been motivated by the wide variety of applications that can benefit from the developments. These applications often involve mobile robots, multiple robots working and interacting in the same work area, and operations in hazardous environments like nuclear power plants. Applications in the consumer and service sectors are also attracting interest. These applications have highlighted the importance of performance, safety, reliability, and fault tolerance. This volume is a selection of papers from a NATO Advanced Study Institute held in July 1989 with a focus on active perception and robot vision. The papers deal with such issues as motion understanding, 3-D data analysis, error minimization, object and environment modeling, object detection and recognition, parallel and real-time vision, and data fusion. The paradigm underlying the papers is that robotic systems require repeated and hierarchical application of the perception-planning-action cycle. The primary focus of the papers is the perception part of the cycle. Issues related to complete implementations are also discussed.

This book defines the emerging field of Active Perception which calls for studying perception coupled with action. It is devoted to technical problems related to the design and analysis of intelligent systems possessing perception such as the existing biological organisms and the "seeing" machines of the future. Since the appearance of the first technical results on active vision, researchers began to realize that perception -- and intelligence in general -- is not transcendental and disembodied. It is becoming clear that in the effort to build intelligent visual systems, consideration must be given to the fact that perception is intimately related to the physiology of the perceiver and the tasks that it performs. This viewpoint -- known as Purposive, Qualitative, or Animate Vision -- is the natural evolution of the principles of Active Vision. The seven chapters in this volume present various aspects of active perception, ranging from general principles and methodological matters to technical issues related to navigation, manipulation, recognition, learning, planning, reasoning, and topics related to the neurophysiology of intelligent systems.

Contents:Editorial (H I Christensen et al.)The Harvard Binocular Head (N J Ferrier & J J Clark)Heads, Eyes, and Head-Eye Systems (K Pahlavan & J-O Eklundh)Design and Performance of TRISH, a Binocular Robot Head with Torsional Eye Movements (E Milios et al.)A Low-Cost Robot Camera Head (H I Christensen)The Surrey Attentive Robot Vision System (J R G Pretlove & G A Parker)Layered Control of a Binocular Camera Head (J L Crowley et al.)SAVIC: A Simulation, Visualization and Interactive Control Environment for Mobile Robots (C Chen & M M Trivedi)Simulation and Expectation in Sensor-Based Systems (Y Roth & R Jain)Active Avoidance: Escape and Dodging Behaviors for Reactive Control (R C Arkin et al.) Readership: Engineers and computer scientists. keywords:Active Vision;Robot Vision;Computer Vision;Model-Based Vision;Robot Navigation;Reactive Control;Robot Motion Planning;Knowledge-Based Vision;Robotics

This book addresses an area of perception engineering which deals with constructive processes. A model of the environment is analyzed using the information acquired from mUltiple viewpoints of multiple disparate sensors at multiple time instants. Although the role of successive model building and active exploration of the environment, as is discussed in this book, is of great importance, only a few researchers of machine perception have thus far addressed the problem in these directions. Krotkov's book, which is a modification and continuation of his highly successful dissertation, focuses on active exploratory sensing in the context of spatial layout perception. He uses stereo and focus to obtain distance By information, and to eventually develop cooperative combining techniques. means of a stereo system with verging cameras, it is demonstrated that the distance measurements can be significantly improved by combining two sources. In addition, the problem of merging information from the multiple views is discussed in detail. As the field of perception engineering seems to be of growing scientific and applied importance, both practitioners and researchers in machine perception will find this book a valuable addition to their libraries. RameshJain Series Editor Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Ruzena Bajcsy for her constant encouragement and guidance during the five years of research leading to the dissertation upon which this book is based. Without her help in all matters, this work would never have been possible.

This unique book explores the important issues in studying for active visual perception. The book’s eleven chapters draw on recent important work in robot vision over ten years, particularly in the use of new concepts. Implementation examples are provided with theoretical methods for testing in a real robot system. With these optimal sensor planning strategies, this book will give the robot vision system the adaptability needed in many practical applications.