ABSTRACT

Defocused images inherently have less inform a­ tion in them than sharply focused images, so most vertebrate anim als having eyes with a ref­ ractive lens focus to improve the quality o f their vision, thereby increasing the inform ation in the images obtained. In physiology, the term “ac­ com m odation” refers to the action o f the ocular lens to focus the eye. Since the quality o f images is frequently poor, the need to accom m odate is acute, and the visual systems o f virtually all sighted anim als are constantly accom m odating to the ever-changing stimuli they receive. The goal o f our research is to give a robot this ability, and to this end, we have designed and built a cam era system with a stereo pair o f mobile CCD

“T his work was supported in part by NSF/DCR 8410771, Air­ force F49620-85-K-0018, DARPA/ONR, ARMY/DAAG-2984-K-0061, NSF-CER DCR82-19196 A02, by DEC Corp., IBM Corp. and LORD Corp.