Robot catching system with stereo vision and DSP platform

The Texas Instrument DSP (TMS320DM642 EVM) is used as the implementation platform in our robot catcher system with two CCDs as source of the stereo vision. The system will separate the thrown-in target from the paired images and then calculate the centroid coordinates of each target image, thereby determining the space location of the object. The Lagrange interpolation formula and the linear function are used to simulate the ball trajectory and predict the catch position and then use the inverse kinematics to calculate the rotation angle and velocity of the 2-DOF robot arm system. After that, the control commands are sent by the RS-232 to the robot arm so as to catch the flying object at the expected location. This catcher robot system can catch the ball thrown to it from four meter away with an average success rate of 65%.