Two Cameras on robot?

[Chomantha1073]

Last year we had two cameras on our robot: one on the chassis right above a large LED array to track the retroreflective tape and to see if a tube was in front of us when we were trying to hang, and one right behind our claw so we could see if we were aligned in autonomous and in teleop. We used the data from both of these cameras to watch matches from the robot's view after they were finished. When we were using the Classmate in 2010, we sometimes had issues with the video files making the computer slow down or crash, but when we switched to a more powerful laptop laptop, we were able to get through last year with no errors due to video files. Our software was only actively analyzing one camera for automonous hanging in teleop and the other was displayed on the driver station.

TL;DR: It's definitely possible to put two cameras on the robot. We've found it extremely helpful both when picking objects off of the floor and when manipulating the game pieces. We haven't tried putting a Kinect on the robot in sync with a regular camera, but we found that using two normal cameras is pretty straightforward.

Chomantha
(Cho and Samy)
Co-CEOs 1073