SOFTWARE DESIGN INNOVATION: TO CATCH A BALL JOSEPH MARTIN

IT TAKES A TEAM Building a robot requires skills across many disciplines 6 weeks isn’t very much time Creating a robot requires lots of experience; more experienced members must share their experience with newer members

THE VISION CO-PROCESSORS USB ports for USB cameras Convenient 5v Power Connections Ethernet ports for communication with cRIO Custom case to easily mount both BeagleBones 2x BeagleBone Black, each with a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 CPU

LOCATING THE BALL WITH DUAL HISTOGRAM BACKPROJECTION a b cd Original image, straight from the camera. For the purpose of finding the ball, it is converted to the HSV colorspace. Histogram backprojection, based on a histogram of the ball. Bright where colors closely match those of the ball from calibration images. Histogram backprojection, based on a histogram of the background. Bright where colors closely match those in the background in calibration images. Binary image that is a combination of figures b and c. Highlighted in green is the contour that is determined to most likely be the ball.

CATCHING THE BALL USING CHAPMAN’S OBSERVATION BA Fig 1 Adapted from Chapman’s 1968 paper, Catching a Baseball Fig 2