This would require 2 cameras, 2 IR diodes, 1 servo and 2 prisms. Essentially, the IR beam would be broken up into a horizontal line using the prism. The IR light band will spread across the bottom of the robot and the camera will pick up the image, it would show the IR light. The image can be process to get the distance of the object. Since the distance from the IR diode and the camera is known, and the angle of the camera would be known. then you can use trigonometry to find the hypotenuse (since its a right triangle) and the distance of the object. So the angle of the object's vicinity is known, then the other IR diode mounted on a servo will create a vertical beam then another camera can pick that up then the info can be processed into a 3d image. Know this is a theory on my part, but I am sure it would work, since that is how laser scanning works. But the 2nd IR setup is to just get the angle of the object compared to the robot, so it does not need to scan everything else.
Now I think this is the way I can achieve full automation:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=84797
Approximately how effective do you guys think this is? I wish I had a diagram for this...
Once you convert the data into an image, you can get the edges for shape detection