ECE 492 - Computer Engineering Design Project Automated Tilting Ball-Maze Using Live Image Processing and Pathfinding Jacob Charlebois, Andrea McIntosh, David Ross, Dominic Trottier 2017 Introduction The goal of our project was to create a system to autonomously solve a tilting ball maze using image processing, pathfinding, and servo motor control. Step 1: Initial Image Step 2: Identify start, end and play space Step 3: Find path For colour ideas, University Visual Identity Guidelines can be found here: http://www.toolkit.ualberta.ca/VisualIdentityGuidelines.aspx Software Design Initial Processing Server gets image of maze from camera Image processing creates a graph representing the start, end, and maze surface using colour thresholds Graph used to compute path using Breadth-First Search Control Loop Camera takes an image of the maze and finds the current ball position Based on path and ball position server determines next servo instruction and sends it to the DE2 board DE2 board controls two servos using signal pulse widths to tilt maze in correct direction to move ball along path Data Rates Serial communication at a rate of 57600 baud PWM pulses in the range 0.5ms to 2.5ms 30FPS camera operating at latency of ~35ms Schematic of system Hardware Components Pre-built tilting base with a custom maze surface. A camera mounted above the maze Servo motor attached to the knobs are used to tilt the maze Server connects to the camera via USB Server connects to DE2 board via serial to control servos System mounted on frame built by machine shop Software Components Image processing libraries OpenCV and NumPy GUI built with Tkinter Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering