Recognition Performance of Vestibular-Ocular Reflex Based Vision Tracking System for Mobile Robot

This paper presents a recognition performance of VOR (Vestibular-Ocular Reflex) based vision tracking system for mobile robot. The VOR is a reflex eye movement which, during head movements, produces an eye movement in the direction opposite to the head movement, thus maintaining the image of interested objects placed on the center of retina. We applied this physiological concept to the vision tracking system for high recognition performance in mobile environments. The proposed method was implemented in a vision tracking system consisting of a motion sensor module and an actuation module with vision sensor. We tested the developed system on an x/y stage and a rate table for linear motion and angular motion, respectively. The experimental results show that the recognition rates of the VOR-based method are three times more than non-VOR conventional vision system, which is mainly due to the fact that VOR-based vision tracking system has the line of sight of vision system to be fixed to the object, eventually reducing the blurring effect of images under the dynamic environment. It suggests that the VOR concept proposed in this paper can be applied efficiently to the vision tracking system for mobile robot.