1. CAPA Bot: Captain’s Autonomous Personal Assistant Robot
Kevin Nelson
EEL 5666
October 29, 2015

2. Introduction My dog (Captain) doesn’t like picking up his toys.
Build a robot to find and retrieve his toys.
Mechanical arm with six servos.
Image processing using OpenCV and Raspberry Pi camera.

3. Special Sensor: Image Processing
Hardware and Software Components:
Raspberry Pi 2
Pi camera (hardware i.e. CSI)
OpenCV (python edition)
Ball Detection Overview:
Convert image to HSV (hue, saturation, value)
Apply a mask to the image
Filter the image (blur, erode, dilate)
Find the contours in the image
Calculate center of ball from largest contour

4. Current State of Project
Software Has a Solid Foundation:
Image processing works well.
Vehicle control in place.
Hardware Needs Work…
Designed new chassis.
Rewire/reinstall components.
Control algorithm for arm.
Uncertainty:
Time – is there enough?
Mechanical arm – will it work? well???

5. Future Direction (i.e. Stretch Goal)
Identify and Stack Blocks:
Idea from EEL 5840 (Elements of Machine Intelligence).
More challenging and interesting problem.
Requires planning from the robot.
Amplifies existing uncertainties.
Adds software uncertainty.
Is it worth it?
Image curtesy of (shamelessly stolen from):
Nils J. Nilsson, Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis, San Francisco: 1998.

6. Questions?