How many Robots at the nationals had an operational Camera Track Autonomous?

[SushaK]

461 had a successfully tracking robot and as mentioned above scored 6 moonrocks in autonomous during one of the matches. our programmers keep expanding their skills and are getting really great at getting the robot to do everything that we want it to accomplish... they even help other teams out!

Go 461!

[ShotgunNinja]

I think that it must have something to do with the visual nature of LabVIEW pushing people to use the visual side of the brain, which can get pretty cluttered when trying to conceptualize a camera control system. Not to mention how C++'s OOP paradigm lets you reimplement the camera controller into your own custom class the way that you conceptualize it best. It's like the difference between C and C++, except that in C the programs actually have a greater chance of not having bugs than C++.

P.S. LabVIEW doesn't qualify as a programming language!

[Greg McKaskle]

I think that it must have something to do with the visual nature of LabVIEW pushing people to use the visual side of the brain, which can get pretty cluttered...

Yeah, that must be it. By that argument, CADing up the robot must be a really bad idea.

P.S. LabVIEW doesn't qualify as a programming language!

Here we go again. Technically you are right, though. LabVIEW is a tool that is used to write G code. G is the language, even though most people call it by the product's name.

If you have learned LabVIEW well enough to criticize it, give it a shot. Explain why it isn't a programming language. While you are at it, explain what a programming language is.

On the vision tracking topic, has anyone started comparing the approaches and determining the key elements that led to success? I did a number of presentations in Atlanta, and I have my list of things.

Greg McKaskle

[Chris is me]

I believe he was being facetious with that comment about LabView's status as a programming language, he probably doesn't prefer it though.

I doubt camera tracking autonomouses failed based on anything other than varied lighting conditions and lack of incentive to do so; 70 / 494 were the only teams I saw do it, though if I recall correctly 2056 tracked. If points were worth double in auto or something then I bet you'd see more teams do it instead of loading in autonomous, but loading paid off way more.

[Nick Lawrence]

We worked all year on our vision system, and it worked pretty well. We did not use it during auto. We had a piezo buzzer attached to our operator's gamepad, which would sound whenever we were relatively close to a trailer we could score on, during Teleop. We also had a button on our pad that, if held, would automatically dump balls, if I had driven into a correct trailer and was locked on to it.

At nationals, it worked about 80% of the time, when it was sunny out.

-Nick

[Akash Rastogi]

Something pretty cool we tried along with 1771 was adding on an IR blocking lens onto the camera. The camera values came out much clearer and tracking did work a little better. With calibration, 1771 had some better luck, we did not, but still chose to load in auto. The lenses were from some special military grade goggles (I totally forget what they actually were) donated by 1771's sponsor.

[NickE]

192 had an operational camera tracking autonomous at the Silicon Valley Regional, but they weren't at the Championship.

[Chris is me]

One thing my team wanted to try was putting a polarized lens over the camera. A 1732 mentor suggested it to us in Wisconsin, but shortly thereafter we gave up on the camera (before we could get one and try it).

[Nick Lawrence]

I know that a couple teams put a fish-eye lens over the camera, due to the rather limited field of view. It seemed to work pretty well for them.

-Nick

[rwood359]

Originally Posted by NickE

192 had an operational camera tracking autonomous at the Silicon Valley Regional, but they weren't at the Championship.

This shows how awesome 192's autonomous was at the Hawaii Regional.
They start in the top right corner steer toward the center, make a major course correction and score (just off camera).
http://www.thebluealliance.net/tbatv/match/2009hi_qf1m1

[gallo26]

Team 79 used the camera (like posted in the beginning) but it never really worked properly. Then we had a match at the North Star Regional in Minnesota.... and once it tracked a trailer... it drove itself the whole match. I couldn't even drive it... quite funny to watch our robot skynet us, even tho it didnt make a score.

[Greg McKaskle]

I never tried an additional IR filter. The lens from the mfgr has one built in. Do you have any before and after images, or values?

As for the polarizer, they are useful when the light is polarized, otherwise they are equivalent to a neutral density filter (a gray piece of glass). The atmosphere polarizes the sunlight to some degree, so polarizing outdoors is pretty effective for blocking glare more than other light. Indoor lighting is not polarized.

The wide angle lens helps with seeing more of the field without panning the camera. I saw some put lenses in front of the camera, others replaced the lens. If you replace it, beware to get an IR filter.

Anything else?

Greg McKaskle

[martin417]

The filter we used was actually a lens from a pair of laser safety goggles. We use IR lasers at work, and have safety goggles to prevent eye injury. What we found is that the incandescent lighting that First uses at events is very heavily weighted towards the IR end of the spectrum, so filtering out a bunch of the IR helped leave bandwidth for the colors we wanted to detect.

In addition, we used a fisheye lens to give us a wider field of view.

[Greg McKaskle]

Do you have any before and after images? I'm curious how much saturation boost this gave you?

Greg McKaskle