Turrets and cameras

[R.C.]

Did anyone find a setting that worked. Thanks everyone.

[jacobhurwitz]

At the DC Regional, there was an opportunity during lunch break on Thursday to calibrate cameras on the field. Greg McKaskle from NI (many of you might recognize his name from Chief Delphi) was there to help, but I only saw two teams (including us) actually out on the field. The first thing Greg said to do was to log in to the camera (192.168.0.90) and lower the brightness level to 0. After that, we tweaked our HSL values a little bit, showed them to Greg, and he approved.

During the matches, our camera seemed to work fine. The only problem was that we had written our code to rely almost completely on the camera, and we only tested our code on stationary targets. When our robot and the target robots were moving, our shooter would miss the target. The camera by itself, though, worked better for us than most people here seem to describe.

[MrForbes]

Thanks for the info, we'll try to get onto the field to do that as soon as we can at our first regional.

We did some playing around with moving targets before ship, so we know it's a challenge...and this is with the target trailer moving pretty slowly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT_zdHa2BsQ

[Alexa Stott]

The values that were given to us by the folks from NI were fairly accurate. We created our own lighting settings in WindRiver specifically for the arena, and our camera was very effective at tracking.

We were given calibration time on Thursday night, and took advantage of it. I was glad we did.

[JesseK]

Originally Posted by Doug Leppard

What is close? And did you succesfully target and shoot at that range?

I'll say that the software was successful enough -- the ghosted targets were at the proper locations when we were within about 3 feet, which was all we were hoping for with the state of our shooter anyways. 50% miss rate, though I don't necessarily blame that on the software...I'm sure the targets were in the right places (range & bearing) on the radar screen.

The Java radar screen on our laptop allows the second driver to follow targets around with the turret, with a cursor representing the turret bearing and shooter speed. There isn't much automation in it due to the fact that it is more difficult than our capacity & timetable allow to create automated tracking algorithms. So it is up to the second driver to lead the shots on moving targets. He was getting decent practice with it Saturday, but we didn't have enough time to tweak it.

Unfortunately, judges don't believe the screen is good enough for an award because of its lack of automation. 90% of their questions were geared towards automation and accuracy of the target tracking system. Forget the fact that we did some pretty technical processing & re-wrapping of data in between the camera, cRIO, DS, and laptop, or the fact that we use a closed-loop turret tracking algorithm, or the fact that we used a standardized DoD System of Systems approach to the whole thing. We'll have to make an animation and presentation for all of that stuff one of these days...

[GearsOfFury]

Originally Posted by Alexa Stott

The values that were given to us by the folks from NI were fairly accurate. We created our own lighting settings in WindRiver specifically for the arena, and our camera was very effective at tracking.

We were given calibration time on Thursday night, and took advantage of it. I was glad we did.

Thanks for the info. What specifically did you change with your time on Thursday? We focused on white balance and exposure; we moved the HSL green values after that but ended up leaving them alone as they didn't make a difference.

We had problems throughout the season with the green HSL values, where the green would flash in and out - but I'm thinking now that maybe that has more to do with whether the algorithm had properly located the pink square first? (E.g., it doesn't look for green unless it finds pink properly?)

[Bharat Nain]

Originally Posted by GearsOfFury

Thanks for the info. What specifically did you change with your time on Thursday? We focused on white balance and exposure; we moved the HSL green values after that but ended up leaving them alone as they didn't make a difference.

We had problems throughout the season with the green HSL values, where the green would flash in and out - but I'm thinking now that maybe that has more to do with whether the algorithm had properly located the pink square first? (E.g., it doesn't look for green unless it finds pink properly?)

To be honest, the field's power supply fried the power supply for the Drivers Station. Go figure. However, we did not get time to do any calibration but we were able to test that the "given" field color values were fairly accurate. Our shooter was able to track the colors. Special thanks to Joshua (NI guy at NJ) who took the time to get these values and was willing to explain it to anyone who asked.

He also mentioned that toning down the brightness might help if your camera is angled high enough. This is because it will see the arena lighting and that will definitely change the way the camera see's the colors. NJ's field lighting was also adjusted to maintain the brightness all over the field to the best of their ability.

[gorrilla]

Originally Posted by Bharat Nain

To be honest, the field's power supply fried the power supply for the Drivers Station. Go figure. However, we did not get time to do any calibration but we were able to test that the "given" field color values were fairly accurate. Our shooter was able to track the colors. Special thanks to Joshua (NI guy at NJ) who took the time to get these values and was willing to explain it to anyone who asked.

He also mentioned that toning down the brightness might help if your camera is angled high enough. This is because it will see the arena lighting and that will definitely change the way the camera see's the colors. NJ's field lighting was also adjusted to maintain the brightness all over the field to the best of their ability.

our camera only tracks pink, so hopefully we wont have any major problems

[dtengineering]

Maybe the robot needs "headlights" to illuminate a target. The stadium lighting shouldn't mess up the vision if your lights are brighter than theirs. Just keep in mind that they'll be shining into people's eyes, so don't make them too bright, and turn them off when they aren't needed.

I'm not surprised the stadium lighting is messing things up. We tried using the CMU cam with the passive vision targets in 2005 (the tetrahedron game) but required a huge amount of constant lighting to get it to work in the shop and gave up on it before trying it out on the field.

I'm curious why, after having good success with active (light emitting) vision targets for a couple of years the GDC would choose to go back to the passive targets.

Jason

[engunneer]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

I'm curious why, after having good success with active (light emitting) vision targets for a couple of years the GDC would choose to go back to the passive targets.

Jason

The should have had a power connection like car/truck trailers, to provide power to a internally lit vision target.

Probably concerns for getting power onthe trailer, and the difficulty of 360 degree illumination kept it out of this year's vision targets. I'm glad they did the green/pink combo on all trailers to ensure fair color tracking between alliance colors. Imagine if the red trailers had only pink targets, and the blue trailers had only green!

[Doug Leppard]

Originally Posted by engunneer

The should have had a power connection like car/truck trailers, to provide power to a internally lit vision target.

Probably concerns for getting power onthe trailer, and the difficulty of 360 degree illumination kept it out of this year's vision targets. I'm glad they did the green/pink combo on all trailers to ensure fair color tracking between alliance colors. Imagine if the red trailers had only pink targets, and the blue trailers had only green!

They could have gone with red/blue leds on the trailers to do the same thing.

It is unfortunate that people work so hard on the cameras only to find out the lighting is an issue.

[JesseK]

Does anyone have any sort of anecdotal evidence (or otherwise) to show whether or not a shroud that blocks light from above would be helpful? I wonder if the effects are similar to when you shield your eyes from the sun to look at something in the distance.

If not, then could someone try it at a Week 2 regional?

[spc295]

would it be against the rules to mount a large colored light (not pink or green) to manually aim a turret. this would avoid camera problems, as well as help the driver aim the turret. that way you can see if you are illuminating a trailer or not?

[engunneer]

Just make sure it won't blind the drivers as your robot points at them.

[MrForbes]

I suggest you read the rules carefully, then figure out exactly what you want to do, then ask on the Q&A, being very specific, providing lots of infomation.