Autonomous Color Based Object Tracking of a Hexapod with Efficient Intuitive Characteristics

This paper proposes an autonomous color-based object tracking hexapod with efficient movement characteristics by intuitively coordinating its neck and six legs. The custom neck enables the hexapod to track faster without having to move much which conserves energy and increases efficiency. The hexapod performs without any additional sensors but a camera which is the only way to gain information about its surrounding environment. The process starts with the camera acquiring visual data to track a user specified object. Then the local coordinates of the object are determined by an uninterrupted color-based object detection technique. After that, a control method is implemented and applied to all servo motors so that the neck and legs of hexapod act in synchronization to continuously maintain the object in the center of its field of view. Finally, the experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed tracking method and control scheme.