| In this dissertation, the problem of vision-guided control of miniature mobile robots is investigated. Untethered mobile robots with small physical dimensions of around 10 cm or less do not permit powerful onboard computers because of size and power constraints. These challenges have in the past reduced the functionality of such devices to that of a complex remote control vehicle with fancy sensors. Teleoperation, however, is a very tedious task for humans and does not scale well when deploying large numbers of robots.; As autonomous control cannot be achieved by the miniature robot itself, a proxy-processing scheme is proposed. With the help of a computationally more powerful entity such as a larger companion robot, the control loop can be closed. Using the miniature robot's video transmission or that of an observer to localize it in the world, control commands can be computed and relayed to the inept robot. The result is a system that exhibits autonomous capabilities.; The framework presented here requires the detection and tracking of a miniature robot in a video stream. A tracking method is presented that places active closed contour models over a color video stream. The menace of the crossover problem is robustly addressed by a novel method that allows the active contour to undergo topological changes during its minimization process. This is achieved by split and merge operations that dynamically create and destroy tracking contours as needed.; The methods developed are tested on a real-world miniature robot, the Scout. Autonomously surmounting the steps of a staircase by means of the Scout's unique locomotion mode, the jump, is chosen as an exemplary task. A detailed kinematic model is developed to analyze the robot's range of motions. The model allows the generation of plans to safely guide the robot up the stairs. |
