An exploratory effort is underway to define the capabilities for vision-based robot control in real-time using one of the new parallel vision machines, the PIPE computer. This will involve new challenges, notably the need to detect and track moving objects as part of the control process. This will require extending the capabilities of the vision-processing system and integration with a robot arm to be controlled. The study should reveal potential problems that will need to be addressed in working later toward real-time, vision-based adaptive control of robots. Until this preliminary exploration is done, it would be difficult to produce a meaningful proposal for the more major long-term research effort.
