Computing camera viewpoints in an active robot work cell

This paper presents a dynamic sensor-planning system that is capable of pla nning the locations and settings of vision sensors for use in an environmen t containing objects moving in known ways. The key component of this resear ch is the computation of the camera position, orientation, and optical sett ings to be used over a time interval. A new algorithm is presented for view point computation which ensures that the feature-detectability constraints of focus, resolution, field of view and visibility are satisfied. A five-de gree-of-freedom Cartesian robot carrying a CCD camera in a hand/eye configu ration and surrounding the work cell of a Plana 560 robot was constructed f or performing sensor-planning experiments. The results of these experiments , demonstrating the use of this system in a robot work cell, are presented.