Posted by Anthony Bee on December 9, 2009 at 5:24pm
Ok the idea is that while fling around u see a sespious vehical. (parden the horrible spelling)So u want the drone to lock on to that vehical and keep it in focus, by tracking it? or locking on or something??Any body got any ideas???
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In terms of vehicle tracking: cars are generally pretty unique as large moving objects and the speed at which they travel. People don't normally walk faster than a couple miles an hour.
If you were going to track them based on size, you may be able to compensate for elevation?
Another thing worth noting about RoboRealm is the (recently added) ability to process a NMEA GPS stream directly, and draw a map in real-time. No Google Earth required. Even waypoints are supported. I have not experimented with any of this yet, but it looks intriguing.
I've never used it .but it looks like Roborealm has a movement recognition function and can fitter out "global movement", the backround. If the target stops, then it would be "invisible". Like a cats see. Then you could use last known gps and imu to aim at that spot until the target moves again. It gets very complicated, but I think it could be done with a video downlink and ground based processing.
Do you have an airframe in mind for this? I ask because it sounds like the BeagleBoard is your best option, and you can fly a Beagle. I know a guy who built his UAV around a BeagleBoard; it's a blended delta similar to the SkyFun, to get the internal space for such a large board. The power draw is a little higher, but the larger airframe can carry larger batteries so it's not much of a problem. If you're committed to a particular airframe that can't carry the Beagle, then you should be fine using the WiFi or similar, but if not then selecting/designing an airframe that can carry the Beagle will help a lot by eliminating the comm delay, which is especially handy for something that can be this processor-intensive. A decent autopilot can run on Beagle and only tie up about 5% of the processing power available, so there's definitely enough left for something like OpenCV.
An opensource version, and possibly the cheapest would be to buy a Beagleboard, which is beefy enough for image processing, and let OpenCV do the rest. So far it's easy, the hard part is transmitting the signal digitally to the base station. (So far, this is what I can not do.) Sry, I kind of responded to your question, and raised another :).
this guy has what you need for doing a ground processing based tracking video system including being able to import image recognition flies the only rub is that output for servo control is digital and the driver board is proprietary with encrypted chip on board but it is small money for something that he continues to support with program up grades
if I were to tackle this problem, I would use National Instruments LabVIEW and use two modules. 1) Vision Dev Module to develop the code and interface to the camera, and then either embed this onto a CCD or use 2) FPGA module to embed this to a FPGA chip.
However, you're looking at serious time, money, and frustration. Vision tracking is very difficult in dynamic environments. Using a FPGA is truly the way to go, but you're going to need a lot of 1 on 1 support from LabVIEW to figure out how to get it all on a FPGA. I believe that a very good tracking system could be developed, but it will no be easy to move this from your PC to a small enough platform for a UAV.
Replies
If you were going to track them based on size, you may be able to compensate for elevation?
http://www.roborealm.com/help/GPS_Reader.php
Andrew.
http://www.paintballsentry.com/Products.htm
However, you're looking at serious time, money, and frustration. Vision tracking is very difficult in dynamic environments. Using a FPGA is truly the way to go, but you're going to need a lot of 1 on 1 support from LabVIEW to figure out how to get it all on a FPGA. I believe that a very good tracking system could be developed, but it will no be easy to move this from your PC to a small enough platform for a UAV.
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