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Re: Best camera for vision tracking
Best camera really depends on what you're trying to do... Coming from real-world experience, you could vary your choice based on whether you're tracking video feed or still imagery. FRC (for the most part, and I imagine nearly everyone) tracks vision targets on still frames pulled from a video feed. That said, which camera is still up for debate. Here's a question to consider - do you really need 1080p resolution? Remember that this means a larger image, thus longer communications latency, longer time for the vision processing algorithms to process the image, and thus a lower response time for your entire vision processing pipeline. Do you really need the quality lens? You're only looking across like a couple hundred feet. How much will using a lower quality lens affect your processing? Is your algorithm really sensitive to barreling and other visual artifacts? Also, do you really need a tripod mount, or a tripod style interface (1/4-20 thread)?
Another thing to think about - lighting. Do you want to restrict your optical train to a particular wavelength of light? Industry does that - LRF (laser range finders) sometimes use a blue laser and a blue filter on top of the imaging sensor to reduce clutter.
CHSR found that the kit camera was okay at range. Sure, the image quality isn't great, but with a robust enough imaging algorithm, we could potentially pull off targeting. Problem is, we never got the algorithm (even though a human had no problem seeing the target) in time. Still haven't (but I don't know how to write it correctly!).
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Nathan Hui
B.S. Electrical Engineering, UCSD '16
FRC 2473 (CHS Robotics), Team Captain '12
FTC 4950, 6038
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