Vision tracking: Did they get it right?

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by dbell

During the kickoff this morning when Dave Lavery spoke about the vision tracking, he seemed optimistic. He said that he thinks "they finally got it right this time." Its obviously early to tell, but what do you think? Will the vision tracking aspect of Breakaway be a disappointment (like past games) or did they get it right this time?

There has been at least two other times when someone has sworn this is the year for vision tracking....

[GGCO]

Honestly, I don't see much of an advantage of it for auton. Unless you can get a ball, line up the target, and shoot it 100% of the time.

It's going to be essential for teleop though. There is no way a driver can manually make a shot without a camera feed on their netbook/drivers station. That's where vision will be awesome!

[DanDon]

While there is a use in autonomous, it seems as if you can place the balls where you'd want, thus allowing the use of encoders and some dead reckoning to allow a shot on target (You know your position, you know the ball's position, and you know the goal's position. It's all a matter of math and distances/timing from there). With regards to teleop....yes having a live video feed is useful, but that's not necessarily vision-tracking, rather just a camera feed. And as your goal is on your side of the field, homing in on the target is not that big of a deal in my opinion. It might be useful if you're looking to score in your opponents goal rather...

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by GGCO

Honestly, I don't see much of an advantage of it for auton. Unless you can get a ball, line up the target, and shoot it 100% of the time.

The reason auton scoring is beneficial, in my opinion, is that the goals will be completely undefended. You might not even need to camera track to score in them.

[DonRotolo]

Can't say if they got it right, but can say we want to use it this year, IF we can get it to work.

[indubitably]

Is there going to be some kind of prepared program we can download?
If so can someone please post a link.

[Radical Pi]

Originally Posted by indubitably

Is there going to be some kind of prepared program we can download?
If so can someone please post a link.

It's probably inside the windriver update (for the c people). Excuse me while I go check for zip files

Originally Posted by jspatz1

Not necessarily. A defensive bot's autonomous mode may be to block a goal.

<G28> says otherwise:

Originally Posted by <G28>

AUTONOMOUS PERIOD ROBOT Movement - During the AUTONOMOUS PERIOD, a ROBOT cannot completely cross the CENTER LINE.

Can't cross the centerline, so can't block opponent shots

[Radical Pi]

Found the code for targeting. According to the comments lighting should have no effect on it. For you tech savvy people (isn't that everyone here?), download the windriver updater, rename it to a .zip, and unzip it. In the folder go to vxworks-6.3\target\src\demo\2010ImageDemo. Target.cpp is the source code for the targeting system.

Looks like they just went with converting the color image into monochromatic and looking for the changes there. they even made detecting the circle an API call.

oh and indubitably you can find the LabVIEW update here.

[indubitably]

thank you

[GGCO]

Anyway I can find the Java camera code? I saw it once somewhere, but can't remember. Thanks in advance!

[GGCO]

http://first.wpi.edu/FRC/frcjava.html

Nevermind.

[slavik262]

I'm really excited for this year. Live video streams to the drivers will be amazing, and the targeting is built into the API (through their ellipse-finding code). Now teams will have consistant, (hopefully) reliable, and contained targeting code that's standard across the board.

[rjbarra]

It uses RobertDrive class which does not support crab drive

[Greg McKaskle]

Since it is not possible to support all type of robot bases with the current WPILib, it controls what is probably the most common. At one level it computes an angle to rotate, then uses robot drive to rotate. It should be pretty easy to map to alternate drive bases. Of course you will likely want it to move forward, kick, line up with another, etc.

Greg McKaskle

[Paul Copioli]

Is vision needed in this game?

Is the goal stationary? YES
Do you know the location of the balls prior to Auton? YES
Do you know your robot location prior to Auton? YES
Is there potential defense in auton? NO
Can a human score without camera? YES


Is vision needed in this game? NO

We are all for using the camera, when the effort is worth it. We used it in 06, because it was worth it. We will not use it this year because it is not worth it.