View Single Post
  #3   Spotlight this post!  
Unread 28-06-2013, 22:24
nathan_hui nathan_hui is offline
Registered User
AKA: Nathan Hui
FRC #2473 (CHS Robotics)
Team Role: Alumni
 
Join Date: Feb 2012
Rookie Year: 2009
Location: Cupertino, CA
Posts: 228
nathan_hui will become famous soon enoughnathan_hui will become famous soon enough
Send a message via AIM to nathan_hui
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!).
__________________
Nathan Hui
B.S. Electrical Engineering, UCSD '16
FRC 2473 (CHS Robotics), Team Captain '12
FTC 4950, 6038
Reply With Quote