team colors and misguided cameras

[kamocat]

I'll share my strategy in this case, because I think it will help the overall safety of the competition.
For the most part, aiming at the closest target is what you want, because it's also the target that can most easily reach you. However, you also want to aim only at targets inside the arena. How can you tell where the edge of the arena is? The white flooring ends.
So, in your aiming VIs, you can disregard targets that are further away than the edge of the floor. Obviously, people are a lot larger than the targets on the top of the trailer, but you can tell where they are by where they touch the floor (or if they don't, as the case may be).

[bobbyt14]

Originally Posted by kamocat

How can you tell where the edge of the arena is? The white flooring ends.

Originally Posted by kamocat

So, in your aiming VIs, you can disregard targets that are further away than the edge of the floor.

You're talking about producing a lot of vision processing code if you're trying to account for the floor as well... just know that the floor isn't the only thing that appears white (people's t-shirts will appear white as well, so how does your camera know where the floor is? a toddler even has difficulty with that)

Originally Posted by kamocat

Obviously, people are a lot larger than the targets on the top of the trailer...

To the camera (or the robot) it's not so obvious... you might want to rethink your algorithm to account for the fact that perception of height from a single focal point depends on an apparent distance due to size on the image rather than the actual distance or height. (many people seated together with similarly colored t-shirts far away from the camera could look like a target).

Originally Posted by kamocat

but you can tell where they are by where they touch the floor (or if they don't, as the case may be).

I'm guessing that the floor will be out of the field of vision for most people's cameras (especially if you're near the target, looking up), so this is probably not a good choice for a reference.

This thread was intended more as a joke than anything else (I guess also as a warning to teams that may try to track a single color). I can almost guarantee that we'll have some rogue autonomous bots firing into the crowd at least once this competition. (and maybe at the judges, too, depending on what colors they're wearing)

who knows, maybe a camera will even track the screen above the field (which will sometimes display a target pulled behind a robot).

luckily, the point of this year's competition will not be shooting.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by bobbyt14

(and maybe at the judges, too, depending on what colors they're wearing)

Judges wear fairly dark blue shirts. The refs wear striped shirts and the field crew get white t-shirts. All tend to wear dark pants. So they should all be safe. MC's are a different story, but their fashions should be running to bright yellow, electric blue, or vibrant red. All colors that should not be picked up by the camera. So while it is likely that balls will get shot at somebody, it probably won't be due to the cameras locking on to the wrong thing. Other programming or aiming errors are much more likely.

[nathanww]

We're going to do a quick sanity check before locking on to anything, which is basically something like

Is there a green and a pink area?
Does the orientation match the opposing alliance?
Are both areas the same size?

This should be pretty resilient,, unless there's a team wearing all pink sitting directly above a team wearing all green

[Jared Russell]

A good safeguard would be to compute where you think the vision target is relative to your robot (since you know the height of the target, and can measure the pitch angle/y position in the frame of the camera). If your robot thinks that the vision target is more than 50 feet away, it's probably a safe bet that you are looking at something that is not the vision target.

[hipsterjr]

The cameras look for pick + green patterns. We were joking that team 233 and team Swamp-Thing on the same alliance would wreck havoc on the cameras tracking . But knowing these two powerhouses, the camera would be the least of your worries .

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by ChrisH

Judges wear fairly dark blue shirts. The refs wear striped shirts and the field crew get white t-shirts. All tend to wear dark pants. So they should all be safe. MC's are a different story, but their fashions should be running to bright yellow, electric blue, or vibrant red. All colors that should not be picked up by the camera. So while it is likely that balls will get shot at somebody, it probably won't be due to the cameras locking on to the wrong thing. Other programming or aiming errors are much more likely.

You call it an error. I call it a feature