Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

At Boston this past weekend, we ran into quite a few issues getting our camera to lock on to the colored target.

We studied up on the issues teams were having in the week 1 regionals as a way to tackle the problems head on, but even through saturday morning were having problems getting the camera to track properly.

By the middle of the day friday the camera was able to track the targets while we were on the red alliance (I forget which orientation that put the colored target green over pink or pink over green). However we were unable to get the camera to lock on when were playing on the blue alliance.

Friday night we came up with an idea and implemented it on saturday. We decided to just track one color....pink or green. The color was determined by which alliance we were playing on. We locked our camera to a given angle that was aimed down enough to only see the bottom target when we were right up against it.

This solution was able to get our robot tracking on both alliances. However I am unsure if this is a good permanent solution to this issue. For atlanta it would be nice to use the 2 color tracking.

If anyone has issues in their upcoming regionals/events with camera tracking, the 1 color tracking method may be good enough to get you at least tracking during the event.

Hope it helps,
Brando

Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

The issue with using only one color is that another item on the field may look close enough in color to look like a target. It is far less likely that something on the field would combine to look like the two colors one above the other.

It really seems that if you are able to find pink alone and green alone that you would also be able to find the pink/green combo. Do you have images or description of what the problem was?

Greg McKaskle

Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

The problem was that the color on top would usually be washed out by the lights. Even when angling our camera almost parallel to the ground the light still caused the colors to get washed out.

Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35780791@N07/

This web site shows images before and after some brightness adjustments. How is your camera setup?

Greg McKaskle

Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

The real issue was we did not have time to go out on Thursday to calibrate the camera. We had to rely on on-field images taken by team 190 (who was very helpful) to obtain HSL thresholds. In the images taken with these particular cam settings (Brightness: 0, Exposure: Auto, Lighting: Fixed Fluorescent 1) the top target was subject to a lot of wash out. Instead of trying to guess at how to fix the issue, we just did the best with what we had. I fully plan on being able to process two targets at the next competition.

Re: Target acquisition with camera- color issues
 

Sounds like a plan.

Greg McKaskle