EYE (coordinate measuring machine)

What don't kill you made you more strong..I'm here to present you the project that I currently work with. The others Vortex Electrica members already show up their final year project. Now, it;s my turn. ;p

I'm not really sure about my thesis title because it always change due to the time. But there are basic targets for the system to operate which :

• System should be able to do coordinate measurement by using single camera and a laser pointer.

• System have the ability to perform basic detection of external object from a predefined area and pointing the laser mark on detected object.

FIGURE 1 : Laser Pointer Mechanism.

I'm more interested doing research and experiment in the field of sensor and how an electronic system interact with outside world. This project will cover a simulation of how the interaction of an eye and the brain with the help of light reference can perform a task in doing polar distance approximation.

Mobility of any robot really depend on their sensor. Image processing offers variation of algorithm than can replace infrared and ultrasonic range sensor. For a distance measurement, stereo vision is used. But to give more narrow and precise coordinate measurement, multiple camera needed.

FIGURE 2 : Plan view of trigonometry distance approximation.

There are no extra-ordinary super complex method implemented here. The idea is to try the other method rather than stereo vision system for distance approximation to mono vision system with the help of light reference for coordinate approximation. From Figure 2, simple trigonometry is used to make approximation calculation using a distance,d and other two angles reading from internal image camera angle and mechanical laser pointer rotation angle.

FIGURE 3 : View from inside camera and image angle calculation.

The precision of the system should be as precise as a narrow laser point area on the object. Rather than measuring a distance of the object to the system, perhaps this system will give a coordinate from a point on the object surface to the system after critical mechanical calibration.

To get a better servo motors response, fuzzy-controller is used to make sure the laser is pointing directly on the interest object(red dot in FIGURE 3) with less oscillation error. This process monitored using real-time image processing(MATLAB).

Challenge that will be faces will be error in coordinate calculation approximation due to non-precise mechanical construction and non-linear of camera behavior. Artificial Neural Network will be a good solution for those non-linearity approximation but the speed of system response should be consider.

This is just a brief introduction about my project. Technical stuff will be discuss later. Hopefully we do have time to share all the ideas together. All the best guys!!