What do you like in the e-puck robot?
Written by Administrator   
Wednesday, 24 November 2010 12:56

The camera has a resolution of 640(h)x480(l) pixels and is color. The full flow of information this camera generates cannot be processed by a simple processor like the dsPIC on the robot. Moreover the processor has 8k of RAM, not sufficient to even store one single image. To be able to acquire the camera information, the image rate has to be reduced and the resolution too. Typically we can acquire a 40x40 subsampled color image at 4 frames per second.Without color we can go up to 8 frames per second. Not more. But you can also acquire another type of image, for instance a line of 480x1 color pixels on the ground facing the robot.

Here are some examples of images taken with the e-puck monitor program:

screenshot of image capture

This first image is taken from a distance of 60 cm with a zoom of 8 (means a pixel every 8).  Max sampling is 4.3 fps.

camera screenshot at 4 zoom

Here the distance is the same as above (60 cm) but zoom factor is 4 (one pixel every 4). Framerate is same as zoom 8 (4.3 fps).

screenshot of camera with room 1

Here the distance is the same as above (60 cm) but zoom factor is 1 (every pixel is taken in the region). Framerate is lower (1.3 fps) because the speed is given by the acquisition rate of the processor.

Grayscale image

Last image is the same but in grayscale. Same distance, but with higher framerate (8.6 fps).

screenshot of camera not square size

You can of course choose a non square picture (here 80 x 20) and get more data in one direction.

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