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In the emerging paradigm of animate vision, the visual processes are not thought of as being independent of cognitive or motor processing, but as an integrated system within the context of visual behavior. Intimate coupling of sensory and motor systems have found to improve significantly the performance of behavior based vision systems. In order to conduct research in animate vision one requires an active image acquisition platform. This platform should possess the capability to change vision geometrical and optical parameters of the sensors under the control of a computer. This has led to the development of several robotic sensory-motor systems with multiple degrees of freedoms (DOF). In this paper we describe the status of on going work in developing a sensory-motor robotic system, R2H, with ten degrees of freedoms (DOF) for research in active vision. A Graphical Simulation and Animation (GSA) environment is also presented. The objective of building the GSA system is to create an environment to aid the researchers in developing high performance and reliable software and hardware in a most effective manner. The GSA includes a complete kinematic simulation of the R2H system, it''s sensors and it''s workspace. GSA environment is not meant to be a substitute for performing real experiments but is to complement it. Thus, the GSA environment will be an integral part of the total research effort. With the aid of the GSA environment a Depth from Defocus (DFD), Depth from Vergence, and Depth from Stereo modules have been implemented and tested. The power and usefulness of the GSA system as a research tool is demonstrated by acquiring and analyzing stereo images in the virtual world.
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