LTF Robot: Binocular Robot with Laser-Point Tracking and Focusing Function

Abstract

A traditional binocular vision system needs matching images captured from its left camera and right camera, which leads to huge computational consumption and matching errors. This paper proposes a novel binocular vision method with laser-point tracking and focusing (LTF) function. A binocular robot with the LTF function is developed, called LTF Robot. The LTF Robot is composed of two cameras, a platform with 3 degrees of freedom, a micro controller, and a computer in which there is an application with the LTF function based on LabVIEW. This robot achieves the LTF function. When the position of the laser point changes, the intersection point of light axes of the two cameras will coincide with the laser point in the environment, and the laser point locates in the center of the images. The laser point is from a laser pointer handling by operators or LED lights mounted on targets. The LTF function is useful for many applications, e.g. guiding the robot easily in human-robot interaction or games, active monitoring and video recording.