Successful Computer Vision

[SuperS_5]

I suggest trying to use LEDs so that the retroreflective tape is put to good use. The lighting onboard the robot, along with the direction discrimination of the tape will allow you to have the best results. Relying on just the dim colour patterns will probably yield bad results. Comparing the differences between using a light source on the robot, and only ambient light was remarkable. This was tested last year in our fairly bright office.

Either way, you can always use both methods, mounting a light source, and using other patterns for recognition. If you come up with a measure of quality of your vision recognition, your program could automatically choose the best fit. The extra cRIO resources consumed can be limited by using a slightly lower framerate. I believe that we managed to have a few independent algorithms running on the cRIO with minimal performance issues.