Short-Baseline Binocular Vision System for a Humanoid Ping-Pong Robot

We develop a short-baseline vision system for a humanoid ping-pong robot. The vision system can provide four-dimensional space-time information and can predict the future trajectory of a ball. Short baseline poses special challenges for achieving sufficient 3-D reconstruction and prediction accuracy within limited processing time. We propose two algorithms including direct calibration of projection matrix and Gaussian-fitting based ball-center location to guarantee the 3-D reconstruction accuracy; we propose algorithm of five-point based ball representation and utilize the constraint of ball detecting region to guarantee the processing speed; we also propose algorithm of smoothing-based trajectory prediction to improve the prediction accuracy. Experimental results show the accuracy and the speed of our vision system can meet the requirements of a humanoid ping-pong robot.