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Robotics and Image processing!

 Back in 2012, we participated in an image processing robotics event at BITS pilani, Goa.

The objective was simple: build a robot which would use video cameras mounted above the area to figure out height of 3 cylinders placed randomly and visit them one by one in descending order.

We had our go at it with some basic matlab programming we learned over the course of 2-3 weeks. Please find the actual problem description, our approach and matlab scripts below.


Problem description : click here

Our solution : 

click here for description

click here for matlab code


Lessons learned:

- Matlab is too slow for real time navigation; we would have had better chances if we were able to modify our robot's firmware to accept a preset route and follow it. Open CV would have worked out much better here.

- We would have discovered the frame-rate issue had we had developed a basic model and tried a test run. Keyword being 'test' here. More you test your system, more robust it becomes!


Two awesome tutorials for image processing:

MATLAB: click here

OPENCV: click here (it has robotics tutorial as well)

These tutorials are from way way back that I can't find their original source any more. In case you are aware of it, I would very much like to know.


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