Robot View

It turns out that the previous robot image view was in fact one of the better images! Things just get worse from that! The above image shows a capture from the robot's point of view on its way back over the course. Our setup is placed not far from an outside window. With the strong sunlight (we're in sunny Los Angeles, CA) the glare from the outside causes significant reflection on the black tiles. Despite being black the tiles appear white when in the appropriate reflective angle with respect to the outside light. Again, this bad lighting was done on purpose in order to review possible solutions to this environmental difficulty when you cannot change the environment. If you can change the environment then is always recommended that you do so, i.e. close the curtains!

You can also see from the above image that the "orange" square also suffers the same affliction as the black tiles. The upper square is actually orange but in fact appears completely white in this view due to the reflected light.

The final robot image view is also taken from the reflected sunlight angle but in this case the lower square finally reveals its true orange color. Yet in the very same image the upper square again appears white.

If you are new to image processing and machine vision you will by now start to gain an awareness of the importance of lighting in these scenarios. Lighting is a fundamental issue when working with robotic vision.

Given these three test images let's begin processing them in order to segment the squares from the rest of the image ...