FRC 2011 Vision Tracking

[Greg McKaskle]

The imaging libs, like almost everything else in WPI is almost identical in LV, C++, and Java. The library names and a few conventions are different, but otherwise the same.

As mentioned, the 2009 examples and other color tracking examples are applicable.

If you've read the tutorial, it mentions robot mounted lighting. Have you built one? Do your images look something like the ones in the tutorial? The next step is to use something such as color threshold or subtraction of an unlit image from a lit image. This refers to flashing the light near your own camera. With either of these approaches, you'll have a binary image. Adjust the threshold or other factors until this isolates the targets. Note that when viewing a binary image, be sure to right-click on the image viewer and choose the palette for binary.

Once you have particles, use the particle analysis report or similar technique for getting location, size, and other measurements from the particles in the image.

Finally, I highly recommend reading portions of the Vision Concepts manual. It is located in Start>>National Instruments>>
and the last part of the path is either Vision>>Documentation, or just Documentation. It will review the many different tools available, show images, talk about conditions that affect when the technique will work best. It reviews the various filters and processing for binary images which may be useful for removing unwanted noise, etc.

Finally, feel free to ask more specifics here, including images or partially processed images.

Greg McKaskle