Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

A robot that sees with an electronic eye

A. A. Michael Raj

The modified toy is the final year project of three students

LOOK, I CAN SEE!: A robot with digital vision, created by students of Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology, in Coimbatore. — PHOTO: S. SIVA SARAVANAN

Coimbatore: Three engineering students went shopping for a toy robot. They bought one that was about a foot high, with wheels under its feet. It moved back and forth in response to commands from a wireless remote control.

They opened the front portion of its face and installed a web camera of the type often connected to desktop computers. After that came the complicated part, mostly electronic circuitry and hardware that would allow the toy to recognise shapes and colours, in order to follow the instructions coded into its digital memory.

Prabhu N., Prabhu R. and Suresh Kumar N. of Sri Krishna College of Engineering and Technology at Kuniamuthur had created a robot with rudimentary vision that enabled it to detect its own image in a mirror or sheet of glass. The modified toy, clad in a bright red dress, was the final year project for the three B.Tech. (Information Technology) students. "Our aim was to equip a robot with vision to identify reflective and non-reflective surfaces. When it is in front of a mirror, it can recognise its colour and shape," said Prabhu N. "We got the idea from the way in which human beings recognise colour and structure." Prabhu R. added, "When it is in front of a mirror or reflecting glass sheet, it first checks the structure of the reflected image and also determines whether the image is bright red. If these features are correct, it performs some action such as turning away to avoid crashing into the surface."

Using their theoretical knowledge of vision recognition systems, the students had recorded samples of how the robot would look at six different points in front of a reflecting surface. They also recorded information about the colour red. By integrating a computer into the system, they enabled the robot to use the web camera as a vision detector. When moving towards a mirror, the robot would process the images from its electronic eye and compare it with the information in its memory regarding its own structure and colour.

If the detected data tallied with the recorded material, the robot would determine that it was looking at its own image and take necessary action to avoid a crash. However, if the robot approached a wall or a box, it would bump into it because it could not recognise non-reflecting surfaces.

Such accidents did not deter the creators of the robot, for they were confident that they could develop the robotic vision system to recognise different surfaces and eventually identify objects based on colours and structures. The students said that although there were battery-operated, robotic toys that could move around and avoid colliding with objects in their path, the technique of using vision detection to avoid collision was a novel one.

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