shanecy:
Any guidance/information anyone has for me on where I could find more information or just advice on what direction I should take would be extremely helpful and appreciated. Our current funding for our project is at $3000. We are going to the approval board here in 2 weeks and everyone in the group is having a hard time deciding on what direction would be more approachable. Therefore, hearing some other input would be very useful at this point.
There is an OpenCV mailing list where you can ask for feedback about the feasibility of the image processing you're proposing.
If/when you know the basic approach is feasible you can start thinking about what resources it's going to need. I'm sure you'll find that a microcontroller is not a suitable platform for this. Unless you have some hidden requirement for this to be portable, I suggest you implement it on a decent spec computer. If you do have some obscure reason for wanting a portable solution, there are some mini computers such as the RPi you could consider. A standard PC would be much easier and better though.