Autonomous Camera Vision

[lildude8572]

Hi,

I am very new to this forum and found it very useful too.  I am sure and hope someone would be able to help me Through my problem. 

We are building an autonomous robot and I am responsible for designing and implementing camera vision for it.
We have to integrate the processor on robot itself and there wont be any human interfacing.

would someone please give me some options for camera vision, or/and tell me if its possible for me to design my own system too.since there isnt any human interfacing allowed, i dont think i can use AVRcam or CMUcam.

I will really appreciate if you could please give me some source of information relating to my problem.

Thank you in advance

[SmAsH]

so...do you have to purchase and mount the camera and get some wireless working? if so i would get a wireless reciever working and then use roborealm www.roborealm.com and what is your budget? there are some really small like 2cm 8 gram cameras for about $140. but one more question. where do you want the output? a screen thats portable? a laptop (probibly easiest)? a tv? lol please give us more info so we may help you to a further extent.

[lildude8572]

Hi,
thank you for your prompt reply.

The project we are working on is building a robot like the ones in robocup leagues, and will play football.  the camera will be used to track the football, see other players on field and also to recognise the goals and guide the robot accordingly.  The budget for camera vision is around £150, which is aroung $300.
please ask if you need further details.

I am really confused on how to go on about this project, and will really appreciate if you could provide me with some start-up information.

thanks alot for your help.

[Rebelgium]

with "no human interfacing" do you mean that the robot has to be autonomous?

If so, why wouldn't you be allowed to use an AVR or CMUcam?
Anyway, these two camera's are the best (and almost only) way to go.

[SmAsH]

ohh sorry i totally misunderstood. i thought it was like to explore and you wanted vision to come back to you... ok i think AVR or CMUcam would be your best shots. but why can you not use them? thats extremely odd lol. i'd say search around the web for robot vision.

[lildude8572]

hello and thank you for your concerns,

yes i guess AVR and CMUcam would be ideal, but since this is my MSc. project and since the topic of my project is about robot vision, wouldnt it be ideal to sort of design a mechanism of my own which will just be project specific? because if i use one of the above mentioned camera, it might make my project very siimple maybe?and there wont be much work to be done?

please let me know your opinions.
will appreciate it.
thank you

[SmAsH]

well avr and cmucam are designed to make it easy i think designing your own mech would be quite a hard thing to do lol i wouldnt but talk to some more advanced people on the forum.

[hgordon]

You might take a look at http://www.surveyor.com/blackfin/ - it's within your budget, and there is quite a lot of computing power along with a high capture frame rate and resolution.  The existing image processing software for the board is pretty limited, but there's plenty of opportunity for you to develop your own routines, but there are GCC toolchains for Linux and Windows.  There's also a Linux port and a Video4Linux capture driver, though we haven't done a lot of work with that environment.

One quick disclaimer - it's my company that builds these boards.

[dunk]

hi lildulildude8572de8572,
do you want this to be a hardware building project or a software project? or maybe both?

if it's a hardware building project then you will need to build something like the AVRcam or CMUcam for your self. those projects websites would be a good place to start.

if you intend to make this a software project then you will need a compact and low power camera and processor combination.
you have a few choices.
maybe find an existing device with camera and processor built in that you can re-flash. (there are phones, digital cameras and webcams in this category.)
or all the products already mentioned (AVRcam, CMUcam, SRV-1) can be reprogrammed. just grab one of these and work on programing in your own algorithm.
my own approach is to use a small embedded processor with USB host port so you can plug in a USB webcam. in my opinion this is the most flexible solution.


dunk.

[lildude8572]

Thank you all so much for you kind help,

yes I think the idea of having a simple embedded processor with webcam attached via a usb port sounds very good.

since i am a mechanical graduate, i have less knowledge about the electrical bits, so can you please suggest some more innovative ways of interfacing the module that is the camera to the processor?

also one last thing, if I go on with using a simple processor and a webcam, can you tell me which will be the main areas i need to work, eg. programming, interfacing etc.  i know this is very low level question, but this is the first time i will be doing an electrical based project.

thank you for your help

[lildude8572]

Hi

I found out that FPGA are good for image processing, will it be a good idea to use them for my module?What sort of  price range do they come in?

how would i have to interface these with camera? also what controller would you recommend?

Thank you 

[hgordon]

You're headed in the wrong direction. 

Until you have a very fundamental understanding processor architectures and image processing algorithms, you would not begin to consider using programmable logic.  Because you are at such a basic starting point, you should look at using existing PC-based image processing tools such as Roborealm (suggested above) just to figure out what functionality you need.  From that starting point, you can determine your actual requirements, and later figure out how to move that onto the robot's onboard processor, but you are a LONG WAY from being able to make that assessment.

[lildude8572]

Yes I agree with you that I need to get the image processing basics right.  But I am still looking for various hardware ideas to be implemented in my project.  I found out that we are allowed to have a remote PC for image processing, so would you please suggest some ideas regarding different types of wireless camera i can use and transmit signals to the PC fo processing. 

Also please tell me more efficient ways to transmit data to the pc.  Will I need any low level processing to be done on the robot itself or can I transmit stream of video to the PC?

[hgordon]

Yes I agree with you that I need to get the image processing basics right.  But I am still looking for various hardware ideas to be implemented in my project.  I found out that we are allowed to have a remote PC for image processing, so would you please suggest some ideas regarding different types of wireless camera i can use and transmit signals to the PC fo processing. 

The problem is greatly simplified if you can run wireless video from the robot, and you don't have to do any low level processing on the robot.  Your 2 basic choices are to get a wireless webcam such as http://www.amazon.com/Axis-Network-Camera-Wireless-802-11G/dp/B000E6UKE6/ or get an analog wireless camera with receiver and digitizer on the PC side.  You might find some hardware recommendations on the RoboRealm website, or certainly on their forum.