RoboRealm Tutorials
 Fun with Surveyor
A couple of basic scripts for the Surveyor robot that are fun to experiment with and enjoy using the robot on. They
can also be used to kick-start your own much more complex projects!
 Lego PC Bot
You might not think that it is possible to put a laptop ontop of a Lego NXT kit but
with the right construction and a small laptop this tutorial introduces you to
our version of a Lego PC Bot. We use this platform (among others) to
experiment with onboard machine vision. The Laptop used runs RoboRealm to
perform machine vision analysis onboard in order to steer the robot around obstacles in
the home.
 The Obstacle Avoidance
tutorial shows how to use machine vision to avoid objects that are within the camera's view.
The tutorial starts off with some basic techniques that are easy to understand and can be used around the
home environment followed by more advanced techniques that are more generally applicable.
 The Marble Maze
tutorial shows how to use image processing and custom path planning to
solve rolling a marble from a start point to and end point within the maze.
 Shape Matching
tutorial using the Imaging Source DBX-21BF04-Z camera for part identification as objects move along a conveyor belt.
 The Surveyor robot following a trail
of orange squares. The goal of this tutorial is introduce different techniques for segmenting/identifying
orange squares in a variety of lighting conditions. The robot should follow the trail and turn
around to continue back over the trail looping from end to end. Note that no encoders or other sensors other than
vision are used in this scenario. This tutorial also introduces the newest release of the Surveyor SRV1b that uses
the blackfin dsp and 802.11 wireless connectivity.
 Reading Digital Displays
from older displays allows you to interface information from your temperature gauge, water heater, barbecue
temperature, coke machine, laundry timer, etc. to your PC. While most modern sensors today have the ability to interface to PC based
systems at lot of the older devices do not. They do, however, offer a digital display that can be read
by humans. The Digital Reader tutorial shows how one can use RoboRealm to read the digits from these
devices and use that information in new ways from your PC.
 Path Planning
using an overhead camera looking down at a maze/arena/etc. We placed the Boe-Bot on a black surface
along with red electrical tape to be used as waypoint markers. The Path Planning module then guides the Boe-Bot
to visit each of these waypoints in the shortest possible path. This is a classic example of how to accomplish overhead
navigation and to use the shortest path algorithm to move the robot along a defined path.
 Wall Avoidance
using the SRV-1 robot. We placed the SRV-1 into a small room and used vision to guide its movements
to avoid the walls. This is done by looking at the floor/wall intersection and interpreting the
results.
 Remote Control Camera
using the Orbit camera over the web. This is a quick one page tutorial on how to setup RoboRealm
as a webserver to respond to requests over the web. In this example we show how to move the Orbit
camera using web browser buttons.
 Controlling a USB Missile Launcher
Here is a fun and quick demonstration on hooking your Joystick up to a USB Missile Launcher. This
tutorial shows you have to map the values from your Joystick and scale them into useable values
by a usb missile launcher device.
 Adding vision to the Lego NXT
Want to give sight to your Lego NXT robot? Here's how we managed to add a wireless camera
to the TriBot and get it to pick up a blue ball and move it over to an orange cone.
 Orienting the Lego Roverbot
Don't know which way your Lego bot it pointing? Use vision to figure out which way round is the front verses the back.
 Color Object Tracking Target colored
objects and move your robot towards those objects .. but not too close!
 Visual Line Following Guide your robot
along lines of any kind using just vision as your sensor. No encoders needed!
Other Tutorials
 Object Following
- A simple object following robot can be built from standard off the shelf parts. Following can
be accomplished via vision processing. The advantage to a vision processing follower is that
little electronics knowledge is needed to build a complex robot.
 The Society of Robots
has an excellent series
of computer vision tutorials with lots of great images. We recommend anyone exploring the
field of image processing in robotics to take some time reading through those tutorials.
Want something to be included in this list? Then
please contact us and let us know!
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