Active Binocular Camera Systems

 



Our first attempt at the design and construction of a binocular robot camera system resulted in TRISH1 (Toronto- Iris-Stereo-Head) (Jenkin et al. 1992; Milios et al, 1993; Jenkin et al. 1993; Jenkin et al. 1994). A key feature was the inclusion of cyclotorsion, motivated by the torsional movements the human eye exhibits. In all, TRISH1 had 7 degrees of freedom,  pan, 2 for independent tilt, 2 for independent vergence, and 2 for independent cyclotorsion. Experiments investigating the effect of cyclotorsion demonstrated that how cyclotorsion affects the orientation of the vertical horopter of a binocular system. Controlled amounts of torsion therefore can adjust the vertical horopter to lie in the 3D plane of surfaces of interest, thus improving any depth estimates of depth made by the system.







Our second  head, TRISH2, removed the cyclotorsion motors, removed the independence of tilt movements and improved the stability of the device. It thus had only 4 degrees of freedom. The head was used in a project to develop a gesture-based human computer interface (SAVI - Herpers et al. 2001; MacLean et al. 2001; Herpers et al. 2000, 1999a, b, c). In this application is proved very robust; active calibration remained an issue however.






References


  1. E. Milios, M. Jenkin, J. Tsotsos: Design and Performance of TRISH, a Binocular Robot Head with Torsional Eye Movements, special issue on "Active Robot Vision: Camera Heads, Model Based Navigation and Reactive Control", International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Volume 7, Number 1, February 1993, pp. 51-68.

  2. Jenkin, M., Milios, E., Tsotsos, J. and Down, B., A binocular robotic head system with torsional eye movements, IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Atlanta, GA, pp. 776-781 May 1993.

  3. Jenkin, M., Tsotsos, J., Dudek, G., The horoptor and active cyclotorsion, IAPR Conference on Pattern Recognition, Vol. A, p707 - 710, Jerusalem, October1994

  4. Jenkin, M., Milios, E., Tsotsos, J., TRISH: The Toronto-IRIS Stereo  Head, SPIE Applications of AI X, Machine Vision and Robotics Conference, p36-46, Orlando, Florida, April 1992.

  5. Herpers, R., Derpanis, K., Verghese, G., Jenkin, M., Milios, E., Jepson, A., Tsotsos, J.K.,  SAVI: An Actively Controlled Teleconferencing System, Image and Vision Computing, 19: 793-804, 2001.

  6. MacLean, W.J., Herpers, R., Pantofaru, C., Wood, L., Derpanis, K., Topalovic, D., Tsotsos, J.K. , Fast Hand Gesture Recognition for Real-Time Teleconferencing Applications, Proc. of the IEEE ICCV Workshop on Recognition, Analysis and Tracking of Faces and Gesture in Real-Time Systems, RATFG-RTS 2001,  pp. 133-140, 2001.

  7. Herpers, R., Derpanis, K., Topalovic, D., MacLean, J., Jepson, A, Tsotsos, J., Active visual control by stereo active vision interface SAVI, , Workshop Dynamische Perzeption, Universitaet Ulm, Germany, 2 - 3 November 2000

  8. Herpers, R., Verghese, G., Jenkin, M., Milios, E., Jepson, A., Tsotsos, J.K.,  SAVI: An Actively Controlled Teleconferencing System, Second IEEE Workshop on Perception for Mobile Agents Fort Collins, Colorado June 26, 1999.

  9. Herpers, R., Verghese, G., Derpanis, K., McCready, R., MacLean, WJ., Levin, A., Topalovic, D., Wood, L., Jepson, A., Tsotsos, J., Detection an tracking of faces in real environments, Proc. Int. Workshop on Recognition, Analysis and Tracking of Faces and Gestures in Real-Time Systems, Sept. 26 – 27, 1999, Corfu, Greece, p, 96 – 104.

  10. R. Herpers, G. Verghese, L. Chang, K. Darcourt, K. Derpanis, J. Kaufman,  M. Jenkin, E. Milios, A. Jepson, J. K. Tsotsos, An Active Stereo Vision System for Recognition  of Faces and Related Hand Gestures, Second International Conference on  Audio- and Video-based Biometric Person Authentication AVBPA Washington D. C. USA, March 22-24, 1999.