Comment by Howard Gordon on June 9, 2008 at 4:46pm

Is there a way for the moving target to carry an active beacon for your blimp to track ? Without that, you aren't going to be able to differentiate your target from other active objects without some fairly sophisticated sensors (e.g. passive infrared PIR detectors) and signal processing.

Video tracking is not simple, but certainly is possible. That was my main intent with the YARB project, though I haven't worked much on this lately.

Comment by Harrison Jones on June 9, 2008 at 7:11pm

Well, you could try to pick a "colorful" target. Like a viewer wearing a bright green or some other color shirt or hat. That way it wouldn't be hard to track

Comment by Aaron Weinstein on June 9, 2008 at 7:29pm

yeah i was thinking something along those lines. i think its really going to be difficult to create an active tag that will provide consistent tracking through various crowds and structures/obstructions.
I'm a little curious about using both ultrasonic and infrared and then playing with some dynamic comparison more advanced than just comparing timing (strength as well...) but i still have to ruminate a bit more.

Comment by Howard Gordon on June 9, 2008 at 7:52pm

Well, you could try to pick a "colorful" target. Like a viewer wearing a bright green or some other color shirt or hat.

Who picks the target ? Is there an operator guiding the selection, or is this intended to be an autonomous operation ?

If this is autonomous and you map your environment for known/expected colors, you could trigger on abnormal color or color combinations and use those as a target. You still have the ultrasound or IR beacons for positional awareness.

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