Advice needed on object tracking

Hi, all!
I need to track distance and direction to a specific object from arduino. The distances
will be short, from 1 inch to 100 inches. I can put something on the object, say a radio transmitter.
What technology could be used for this? Are there any ready to use solutions for this problem?

Radio will not work.

You have not provided enough information for alternative suggestions.

What else information is needed? I'm trying to track lab animals. Arduino will be stationary, animals will move around at a relatively close distance. The information I need is a distance of each animal to the base and it's angular position.

I know about IR motion detectors, but the simple ones can not tell from which direction the motion happens. They are also not specific, say I can not distinguish an animal from any other object.

A video camera and a PC for image processing comes to mind.

Full blown object recognition and tracking is not an option for me. I'm looking for something really simple, and the need for recognition is not so important - just tracking will be fine. Anyway, thanks for suggestion

Object tracking is quite a difficult problem. There is nothing that is "really simple".

Lab animals? If thats what youre tracking then can you leave the area clear for them, an IR detector will have a much better time with that environment. If you mount it a makeshift robot arm or simply onto a servo you can use the Arduino serial monitor to record the distance of the animal from the base and the servo positions which will give you an accurate idea of where it is. If youre willing to put in the effort like that you can get something simple done but it wont be as easy to gather results. Im not 100% sure an IR will print distance however but you can give it a go. An ultrasonic sensor will print exact distance maybe combining both? Bottom line, this will track, dont know enough about PIR type sensing to know for sure if it will follow but if it can the servo can rotate to stay with the animal. jremington is right though, object tracking is much more difficult than simpler object recognition (an alarm type system). :slight_smile: