Making a robotic arm autonomous

[binfazen]

Hello. I have already made a robotic arm controlled by arduino wia C# program with sliders. But now, I would like that my robotic arm see object on the table and take it and move without my help. The main problem is - How I can start to do this? Because I am new in this sitution. Any suggestions? Making a webcam take a photo, analyze it and send a command to robotic arm to work or something like that.

Please, share your experience and take me on the right way.

Thank you for answering

[totalis]

Python has an (several) image libraries and is a common scripting language used on a few webcam apps so that is the first point.
NB. i have not done this before but i have seen it done

 Also python has serial libraries that are capable of dealing with this kind of thing.
NB. this i have done before with great success

as for the actual algorithm, i dont know. maybe blob detection then use of goals to choose target, a fixed size ball (or similar) would allow you to guess the distance from camera to ball. then its a case of arithmetic and communication..

just my musings...

T