Research In Computer And Robot Vision

Research in Computer and Robot Vision is directed toward researchers and graduate students in the field of computer vision. A broad spectrum of recent research is presented including sensing and navigation for mobile robots, the extraction of lines, curves, surfaces, and skeletons from intensity images and range images, human motion, and feature extraction. Three applied research projects are presented on the topics of handwriting recognition, automatic understanding of technical drawings, and the collection and interpretation of 3-D images for use in dentistry. These papers dramatically illustrate the breadth of implications of the use of computer vision in industrial, social, and even medical arenas.

Over the past five years robot vision has emerged as a subject area with its own identity. A text based on the proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Vision and Sensor-based Robots held at the General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan in 1978, was published by Plenum Press in 1979. This book, edited by George G. Dodd and Lothar Rosso!, probably represented the first identifiable book covering some aspects of robot vision. The subject of robot vision and sensory controls (RoViSeC) occupied an entire international conference held in the Hilton Hotel in Stratford, England in May 1981. This was followed by a second RoViSeC held in Stuttgart, Germany in November 1982. The large attendance at the Stratford conference and the obvious interest in the subject of robot vision at international robot meetings, provides the stimulus for this current collection of papers. Users and researchers entering the field of robot vision for the first time will encounter a bewildering array of publications on all aspects of computer vision of which robot vision forms a part. It is the grey area dividing the different aspects of computer vision which is not easy to identify. Even those involved in research sometimes find difficulty in separating the essential differences between vision for automated inspection and vision for robot applications. Both of these are to some extent applications of pattern recognition with the underlying philosophy of each defining the techniques used.

Assembled in this volume is a collection of some of the state-of-the-art methods that are using computer vision and machine learning techniques as applied in robotic applications. Currently there is a gap between research conducted in the computer vision and robotics communities. This volume discusses contrasting viewpoints of computer vision vs. robotics, and provides current and future challenges discussed from a research perspective.

Robotic systems consist of object or scene recognition, vision-based motion control, vision-based mapping, and dense range sensing, and are used for identification and navigation. As these computer vision and robotic connections continue to develop, the benefits of vision technology including savings, improved quality, reliability, safety, and productivity are revealed. Robotic Vision: Technologies for Machine Learning and Vision Applications is a comprehensive collection which highlights a solid framework for understanding existing work and planning future research. This book includes current research on the fields of robotics, machine vision, image processing and pattern recognition that is important to applying machine vision methods in the real world.

"Presents a solid framework for understanding existing work and planning future research."--Cover.

Assembled in this volume is a collection of some of the state-of-the-art methods that are using computer vision and machine learning techniques as applied in robotic applications. Currently there is a gap between research conducted in the computer vision and robotics communities. This volume discusses contrasting viewpoints of computer vision vs. robotics, and provides current and future challenges discussed from a research perspective.

In 1986, B.K.P. Horn published a book entitled Robot Vision, which actually discussed a wider ?eld of subjects, basically addressing the ?eld of computer vision, but introducing “robot vision” as a technical term. Since then, the - teraction between computer vision and research on mobile systems (often called “robots”, e.g., in an industrial context, but also including vehicles, such as cars, wheelchairs, tower cranes, and so forth) established a diverse area of research, today known as robot vision. Robot vision (or, more general, robotics) is a fast-growing discipline, already taught as a dedicated teaching program at university level. The term “robot vision” addresses any autonomous behavior of a technical system supported by visual sensoric information. While robot vision focusses on the vision process, visual robotics is more directed toward control and automatization. In practice, however, both ?elds strongly interact. Robot Vision 2008 was the second international workshop, counting a 2001 workshop with identical name as the ?rst in this series. Both workshops were organized in close cooperation between researchers from New Zealand and Germany, and took place at The University of Auckland, New Zealand. Participants of the 2008 workshop came from Europe, USA, South America, the Middle East, the Far East, Australia, and of course from New Zealand.

Over the past five years robot vision has emerged as a subject area with its own identity. A text based on the proceedings of the Symposium on Computer Vision and Sensor-based Robots held at the General Motors Research Laboratories, Warren, Michigan in 1978, was published by Plenum Press in 1979. This book, edited by George G. Dodd and Lothar Rosso!, probably represented the first identifiable book covering some aspects of robot vision. The subject of robot vision and sensory controls (RoViSeC) occupied an entire international conference held in the Hilton Hotel in Stratford, England in May 1981. This was followed by a second RoViSeC held in Stuttgart, Germany in November 1982. The large attendance at the Stratford conference and the obvious interest in the subject of robot vision at international robot meetings, provides the stimulus for this current collection of papers. Users and researchers entering the field of robot vision for the first time will encounter a bewildering array of publications on all aspects of computer vision of which robot vision forms a part. It is the grey area dividing the different aspects of computer vision which is not easy to identify. Even those involved in research sometimes find difficulty in separating the essential differences between vision for automated inspection and vision for robot applications. Both of these are to some extent applications of pattern recognition with the underlying philosophy of each defining the techniques used.