User:Herko60/Second Project

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Project Preference
1. Object Tracking for Robot Vision

2. Automatic Shaker Table Design Report

3. MakerBot PLA Material Characterization Implement Report''

Problem Statement
The focus on this second project is to track a moving object that is moving at a constant velocity or constant acceleration.

Project Plan
To succeed in this second project, my partner and I listed these various tasks for the next 4 weeks. *problem associated with respective ideas *designing a survey for what people are interested in vision tracking *research the web for vision tracking concepts * conceive using vision tracking based on the survey results. The main task will be centered on the survey results.

Week 1 Narrative
My introductory week into the Vision-Based object tracking project was to browse the web or any documentation related to Vision-Tracking and to have some ideas behind the Concept of Vision Based object tracking. As I was able to find, this concept can be successfully used in diverse applications from driverless cars, video surveillance,automatic trainer in table tennis or automatic- deer hunting to medical imaging. Here are some links for the main websites where I was able to get some useful ideas. http://www.krri.re.kr/teams/urban/advancedEMU/result/2st/2-14.pdf

http://iplimage.com/blog/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision

The bloc diagram below represents a basic vision based object tracking system.



Week 2 Narrative
My second week on my current project was to refine and perform a survey ( showing to the right)  that will enable my project partner and I to definitively pick an idea from the choices list and start to conceive a system using "vision based object tracking concept". Out of 26 people who took the survey as I expected, the football catcher( 13 out 26)  was the top choice by far, followed by the hockey table and the robot alarm dog. The survey results are consigned in the link below. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Results2.png People were quite enthused by the football catcher and they were even willing to pay a fair amount of money( around $350 ) to have something similar. After concerting with my project partner to assess his survey results, we found that the football catcher was also the top choice in his survey and we agreed to pick the" Football Catcher" based on the results. My following task for this second week was to outline the Market/customer needs, Enterprise Goals and Capital. As far as the Market/Customer needs is concerned, there is a real market potential for an Automatic Football Catcher:Football is among if not one of the most revered sports in the U.S.A and most of families here have single kid loving football; an Automatic Football Catcher will be a great playing partner for this kid who will not have to rely on another kid to play football at his convenience.This Project being part of the ENES100 here at HCC, the capital for this project is linked to Howard Community College and a success in the implementation of this project will certainly boost the image of HCC at various Engineering Fairs.

Week 3 Narrative
This week, my tasks for this second project were to sort and analyze the "trade off" among the different concepts on the Automatic Football Catcher  and to list the system performance metrics. There were many trade off among the different concepts my project partner and I had for the automatic football catcher. - To have a more realistic and more accurate football catcher, two cameras should be mounted on the top the net(catcher) to track the ball and the net should move in 3D( three dimensions: from left to right, up and down, back and forth). This approach requires a lot of equipment(powerful motors, more rails and batteries); the coast will exceed by far the maximum amount of money the College can allocate to the project. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Motion_in_3D.jpg -The cheapest option but less realistic is to limit the movement of the catcher in 2D( two dimensions; up and down and left to right).This approach will be similar to the" hockey table" and the only difference is that the catcher will lay vertically. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/2D_motion.jpg -To allow the catcher to track and catch the football more precisely, some LED's should be embedded in the ball along with the circuitry powering the LED's; also the football will be covered with fluorescent bands or stripes. The modified football will be then heavier and therefore less enjoyable for kids of a certain age( less than 10 year old). https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Glowing_ball.jpg As far as The System performance metrics were concerned, A person will stand at about 10 or 15 yards away from the automatic  football catcher and throw the ball at maximum speed of 25 mph at the catcher; the catcher should be able to track and position itself so that it can catch the ball within 3s by moving in two dimension( up of down  and from left to right).



Week 4 Narrative
My tasks for this last week into my second project was to work on "modeling of systems and ensuring goals can be met " and "development and project management " sections of our CDIO report. The" Modeling of Systems" section of the CDIO did not apply to our project since we were only in the conceive phase. I estimated that the cost of prototyping a 2D Automatic Football catcher would be around $250( batteries, motors, gears, raspberry processor and cameras) and that it will take approximately from 8 to 12 weeks to conceive, design and prototype the model. At the Professor request, I revisited the different concepts to have a broader choice and used the decision matrix to narrow down the major concepts to three and discuss about the trade-offs among those concepts.Below are the links to the different concepts.



I also worked on the" next step " section of the CDIO report; as far as the next step is concerned, I highly recommend to further this project to the design phase because there was a huge interest about an automatic football catcher among the 58 people who took part of the survey about "vision based object tracking concept". Furthermore,after we did some extensive research on the automatic football catcher, we could not anything similar and there is a huge financial potential in this concept.