Axis wireless camera, Arduino,
Ethernet shield and Pololu robot
MSc dissertation
proposal 2012/2013
Introduction:
"Although a few of the robots of tomorrow may resemble the anthropomorphic
devices seen in Star Wars, most will look nothing like the humanoid C-3PO. In
fact, as mobile peripheral devices become more and more common, it may be
increasingly difficult to say exactly what a robot is. Because the new machines
will be so specialized and ubiquitous--and look so little like the two-legged
automatons of science fiction--we probably will not even call them robots. But
as these devices become affordable to consumers, they could have just as
profound an impact on the way we work, communicate, learn and entertain
ourselves as the PC has had over the past 30 years."
Excerpt of A Robot in Every Home, Bill Gates,
ScientificAmerican.com, January 2007.
Current home (personal) mobile
robots are starting now to have affordable prices. Those robots can be vacuum
cleaners such as the iRobot Roomba,
can be telepresence robots, as the Anybots' QA, or can be simply Mobile Webcams, such as the WowWee's Rovio [Rovio-www]. Most of these
robots have in common the combination of mobile robotics, video cameras and
wireless communications. Communications are in many aspects the bottleneck of
the robots. In this work we propose using the wireless network of surveillance
cameras as a basis to build networked mobile robots.
Objectives:
The objectives of this work are threefold: (i)
assembling
one Axis 207w
camera and one Arduino 2009 on a Pololu robot basis, (ii) developing software to communicating with the Axis cameras and passing commands to a
microcontroller that drives the mobile robot, (iii) developing a graphics user
interface to command the robot while observing the captured images.
Detailed description:
Surveillance is one of the envisaged applications for mobile robots.
Surveillance mobile robots in essence combine mobile robots with cameras and
internet communications. One of the key challenges to build these robots is
certainly creating reliable wireless communication methodologies. In
particular, the communications are expected to work in occupied spectrum
scenarios such as most of today's office environments.
Wireless
communications are well worked out in wireless surveillance cameras (see e.g. [Axis-www]).
The main focus of the current work is therefore exploring the effective
communication methodologies present in a surveillance camera (more precisely
the Axis 207w), link it to a general microcontroller (Arduino
2009 or Uno [Arduino-www]) and then mount both
elements on a mobile robot (Polulu [Polulu-www]).
The work is therefore organized in the following main steps:
- Mounting the Axis 207w and the Arduino on the Pololu robot basis
- Acquiring video in a PC having a
wireless connection to the Axis camera
- Using the Axis camera to
pass-through commands from the PC to the Arduino
- Designing a user interface
commanding the mobile robot and observing the images captured by the onboard
camera
References:
[Rovio-www] "Rovio Mobile Webcam", http://www.wowwee.com/en/products/tech/telepresence/rovio/rovio
[Axis-www] "Axis 207 Network Camera", http://www.axis.com/files/datasheet/ds_206.207_hsing_0207.pdf
[Arduino-www] "Arduino
open-source electronics prototyping platform", http://www.arduino.cc/
[Polulu-www] "Pololu
RP5 Tracked Tank Chassis Gray", http://loja.lusorobotica.com/125-pololu-rp5-tracked-chassis-gray.html
Requirements (grades, required courses, etc):
-
Expected results:
At the end of the work, the students will have enriched their experience
in creating an embedded system using off-the-shelve components. In particular
are expected to develop and assess:
- The hardware integration of the various components
- Software to interface and monitor the system
Place for conducting the work-proposal:
ISR / IST
Quotation:
"In summary...you don't always get the luxury to pick your term
project, but if you can, find a problem you want to solve for yourself in your
own life. Design a novel solution for it with a PIC or other microprocessor.
Wire it up and program it. Understand the hardware and software well so that
you can present it well. Have a fun time doing it. If you find that you lose
track of time while you are working on the program and find it hard to put it
down even at midnight, you've got exactly the right idea! Best wishes!"
[excerpt extracted from
http://www.vermontficks.org/students.htm]
More MSc dissertation
proposals on Computer and Robot Vision in:
http://omni.isr.ist.utl.pt/~jag