A miniature retina-based AGV called VAMPIRE

From a robot vision point of view, none of the individual visual operators presented features much originality. However they all make up a complete perceptual task, allowing a miniature vehicle to follow a specific textured target. Furthermore, most of them are performed inside a programmable artificial retina that fits, together with its controller, within a few cm/sup 3/ and make the vehicle a miniature autonomous one. After a presentation of the scientific motivations, we describe the whole process and its implementation and we take the opportunity through the elementary steps to illustrate the generic issues of such retina based vision systems.