We would like to participate to a contest and for our robot we will need to be able to detect and grab some object in 3D not always on the ground. The playground is about 3m x 2m.
I have found OpenCV for the object recognition so I am suppose that I should be able to recognize my object with it but I will need to evaluate the distance also.
So we try to find the best way to do that. Do we need to have 2 webcams, 1 webcam + a laser telemeter, another solution?
The idea for the moment will be to embed a laptop on the robot + one or 2 arduino. The laptop will process the logic especially if we need image processing and also because we will use c#. The arduino will be there to control the servos and the different sensor except maybe the webcams who can be directly connected to the laptop.
That is why I will embed my laptop I had the seem feeling about the image processing.
I plan to do this process on my laptop and not on the arduino itself. But the arduino will be still there for the servos and sensors. Maybe also for the telemeter if I need one.
Once you've identified the object of interest, and know the direction (horizontal and vertical) to that object, a Ping sender is all you need to know the distance.
Once you've identified the object of interest, and know the direction (horizontal and vertical) to that object, a Ping sender is all you need to know the distance.
I'm not sure how directional those ping senders are.
You'd need to attach it to the camera arm, to point where the camera is looking, and if there were any other objects near the object you wanted to get the range of, it could give false results.
Probably laser range finder is the only thing that would truely give the distance
Perhaps one of these could be modified, so that the data being sent to the display could be read by the Arduino etc
I would hazard a guess that that company is a civilian spin-off of South Africa's defence program. (They're a stone's throw from Pretoria's two military airbases....)
About the kinect it isn't an option because it begin at 50cm and 50cm on a playground of 2mx3m it is huge
The best option I see until now is a webcam and I will try estimate the distance from a 2D images (I know the height of the webcam so it should be possible) and add a infra red telemeter to increase the precision (if I see that the precision isn't good enough)
