Surveyor SRV-1 Room Video

(338 KB) Video of what the robot sees while navigating around the maze. It is very jumpy since the video stops streaming during the motor moves which are very noticeable when turning.

Problems

It is worth pointing out some of the failures that we experienced during the creating of this tutorial. As one can learn much from mistakes we chose to share some of the issues.

1. The video image size for processing is 80x64. While this is sufficient for wall avoidance a higher frame rate would be desired in order to increase the speed of the robot. We achieved about 4 fps while running the robot within the room. The wireless transmission does add in some delays which can causes the robot "blindspots" during a move. With increased wireless speed the robot would receive more frequent updates from the PC and thus could move in a more reliable and faster way.

2. There are still times that the robot can become stuck within the room. Since we are using a black painted metallic floor (to ensure the wall magnets stick) the robot has a tendency to slip when rotating. This slippage can cause the robot to unintentionally backup into a wall if it is close to it while turning.

3. We did not factor in any noise suppression for the wall detection. Adding a mean or gaussian filter would soften the image and provide a less noisy line detection. This would allow the robot to more confidently approach a wall without turning too soon.

Your turn ...

Want to try this yourself? Download the Surveyor Maze robofile to run the example yourself. Clicking on any of the modules will bring up that module's interface and allow you to customize it for your needs.

Conclusion

We are extremely happy with the Surveyor SRV-1. It is a nicely built platform that is just fun to work with largely due to its small size. The battery lasts longer than most of the other vision platforms we have experimented with. The small size and weight allows us to experiment with it in confined environments so setup is quicker and less costly. The form factor also allows us to check motor and sensor values while actually holding the robot so a raised testing mount is not needed. Please see the Surveyor Website for more information on how to purchase this little wonder!

The End

That's all folks. We hope you've enjoyed this little adventure into an application of machine vision processing and have inspired you to download a free trial of our software.

If you have any questions or comments about this tutorial please feel free to contact us.

Have a nice day!