Optimal board for vision processing

[matan129]

Originally Posted by jman4747

The most powerful board in terms of raw power is the Jetson TK1. It utilizes an Nvidia GPU witch is orders of magnitude more powerful than a CPU for virtually any vision processing task. And if just want to use its' CPU it's still has a quad core 2.32Ghz ARM which to my knowledge is more than most if not any other SBLC on the market. It is however $192 and much larger than an R-Pi.

http://elinux.org/Jetson_TK1

PS Here are some CD threads with more info:
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ghlight=Jetson

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ghlight=Jetson

Thanks for the suggestion! But it's kind of pricey, when compared to Pi. Is it worth it?
Also, is the developing for CUDA any different from 'normal' developing?

Originally Posted by techhelpbb

So far the vision processing MORT11 has done has been done with a stripped down dual core AMD mini-laptop (bigger than a netbook) on the robot that is worth less than $200 on the common market. It has the display and keyboard removed. It has proven to be legal in the past but we have rarely relied on vision processing so it often is removed from the robot mid-season.

That laptop is heavier than the single board computers in part because of the battery. However I would suggest that battery is worth the weight. As the laptop is COTS the extra battery is legal. This means the laptop can be running while the robot is totally off.

The tricky part is not finding a single board or embedded system that can do vision processing. The tricky part is powering it reliably and the battery fixes that issue while providing enormous computing power in comparison.

Very likely all of the embedded and single board system that will be invariably be listed in this topic will not be able to compete on cost/performance with a general purpose laptop. The market forces in the general computing industry drive differently.

The cRIO gets around this issue because the cRIO gets boosted 19V from the PDU and then bucks it to the internal low voltage it needs. As the battery sags under the motor loads dropping the 19V is no big deal if you need 3.3V. As switching regulators are generally closed loop they adapt to these changing conditions.

So just be careful. The 5V regulated outputs on the robot PDU may not operate in a way you desire or maybe provide the Wattage you need and then you need to think about how you intend to power this accessory.

People have worked around this in various ways: largish capacitors, COTS power supplies, just using the PDU. I figure that since electronics engineering is not really a requirement for FIRST that using a COTS computing device with a reliable and production power system is asking less.

Keep in mind that I see no reason an Apple/Android device like a tablet or cell phone would not be legal in past competitions on the robot as long as the various radio parts are properly turned off. It is possible someone could create a vision processing system in an old phone using the phone's camera and use the phone's: audio jack, display or charging/docking port to connect it to the rest of the system.

Thank for the detailed info! But in this case, I guess I can just use a stripped-down classmate (we have 2 of those), or just any other mini laptop in order to do so (I guess that the Atom Processor is more then powerful enough in terms of computing power). Also, what platform did you use to develop the image processing code?