Bumper Colors Messing with Vision

[faust1706]

Originally Posted by adciv

In LabView, there were three vision examples this year. One tracks the retroreflective tape. One tracks the Yellow of the yellow tote. One tracks the FIRST Logo on the totes & cans.

Recommendation: Don't use yellow if you think it could interfere with your alliancemates vision system. Alternatively, keep ducttape on hand to cover it up if it is an issue.

Even though NI released code that tracks the tape, color, and logo, I still feel the only vision guide is the tape. Again, this is my interpretation of the rules. I could be way off. I made the mistake of tracking the tape last year. I'm pretty sure we were the only team to do that. But we had a cool triangulation code that me and a friend are trying to get published, so it wasn't for nothing. Moral of this story: my judgment is not good.

[Greg McKaskle]

The NI example looks for yellow and for a carpet color, either red or blue, that are in appropriate relative locations to one another. It also scores the yellow object on size, aspect ratio and profile. If you take photos, it is easy to run them against the code and see how they score. Or post photos and I'll run them.

Of course teams can change the code to simplify it, change the importance of various scores, or they can make it even more specific to how their robot wishes to align with the tote. I hope many will do this, as the examples are intended as just that, examples or inspiration, and not necessarily as solutions.

Since yellow bumpers will hurt your own alliance, it is certainly worth being creative about the design and usage of that color or solutions for when there is an issue. Since your team already has solutions for bumper swapping, perhaps you want an "away game" bumper in case an alliance wants you to use it.

Greg McKaskle