Rookie Team Prgramming [autonomous]

[RyanCahoon]

Originally Posted by Garii

what i need to know is as follows:
-is there a way to use camera code to track not only colors but objects [ie other robots and barriers] and use that code so we can avoid those obejects

A fairly robust way of doing this that I can think of is to make use of the fact that a majority of the playing field is white this year, and that almost all teams that I have seen use-non white bumpers. Try taking a picture of your robot sitting on a white surface and import it into Vision Assistant, then play around with the Color Threshold filter.

To get a sense of where these obstacles might be, mount your camera at the bottom of your robot, and point it slightly downward. The y-position of the obstacles you identify will be roughly proportional to the distance they are away from you. A related algorithm is the Polly algorithm, more info here with some good pictures for visualization; you'll just be using white/non-white pixels instead of doing edge detection to find obstacles.

EDIT: Note, that this method will mean that you can't track trailers at the same time, as your camera has to be pointed at the floor. If you want to track trailers, I'd advise that you use the camera only for that, in which case you could consider using something like an ultrasonic range sensor to detect obstacles, although this is a much coarser way of doing it.

If you have any more questions, feel free to post back in this forum, and I'll try to help you out.

--Ryan