Axis wireless camera, Raspberry-Pi and Pololu robot
MSc dissertation
proposal 2013/2014
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.
Home mobile robots are starting to
have affordable prices. Home 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 use a
wireless network adapter to transport video and control-messages between the
Raspberry-Pi [Raspberry-Pi-www] and a desktop
PC.
Objectives:
The objectives of this work are threefold: (i)
assembling
one camera
and one Raspberry-Pi
on a Pololu robot basis, (ii) developing software to communicate with the Raspberry-Pi onboard camera and passing
commands to drive 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]). However, one usually finds that wireless cameras
are not designed for interacting with other devices such as the Arduino or the Raspberry-Pi. It is therefore important to
explore cameras
which integrate well with other hardware, such as the Raspberry-Pi cameras.
The required video
compression, necessary to pass through narrow bandwidth constraints
found in wireless communications, is expected to be handled by the
Raspberry-Pi.
The main focus of the current work is therefore exploring the effective
communication methodologies present in wireless network cards, mounted on a
Raspberry-Pi equipped with a camera and mounted on a mobile robot (Polulu [Polulu-www]).
The work is therefore organized in the following main steps:
- Mounting the Raspberry-Pi and the camera
on the Pololu robot basis
- Acquiring video in a PC having a
wireless connection to the Raspberry camera
- Using the wireless connection to
pass-through commands from the PC to the Raspberry-Pi
- 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/
[Raspberry-Pi-www] "Raspberry Pi | An ARM
GNU/Linux box for $25. Take a byte!", http://www.raspberrypi.org/
[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