Help me select camera for a line following robot

[david90]

for my senior project, my group is making a robot car that could follow a line by using a camera as line sensor. The output of the camera will be analyse by a PIC MCU and it will control the motors guide the robot car. What type of camera is best and easiest to use for this project?

 

[scart]

Re: line following robot

i think it will be easyer if u used a LED and photosensors, the reflection of the LED light from the dark line will be differ from other places so some of the photosensor will riceev less light then others and u could determin the direction of the line

i fownd that in google year ago

regards

 

[david90]

Re: line following robot

The robot has to be guided by a camera. No IR.:|

 

[House_Cat]

Re: line following robot

You don't need color for such a simple application, so an inexpensive CCD black and white module should work for you. A CMOS camera would also work, but is probably higher resolution than you need, and a bit more expensive.

A board mount CCD black and white camera module should cost less than $50 US. Most CCD modules are fairly sensitive to IR, so IR diodes could be used as illuminators in place of visible light. CCD modules run on low current, and require 9VDC or less. That makes portibility less of a problem.

Do a Google search for ccd b w camera module and you should turn up quite a few prospects. A simple search for b w camera module will return a different assortment.

 

[seadolphine2000]

line following robot

you can use a small web cam, I saw this in a graduation project this year but,... you need some kind of image processing in order to determine the line postion in the image.

 

[david90]

Re: line following robot

have u heard of cmu cam? My advisor wants to use it for the project.

In a nutshell, what are the steps to processing the camera digital output? How do you recognize the line?? The concept of digital image processing is completely new to me and I have no idea where to start. If I can have an overview of processing procedure then I can start researching.

 

[House_Cat]

Re: line following robot

CMUcam stands for Carnegie Mellon University camera. The unit was developed at the university specifically for tracking.

You could have done a search on Google using "CMU camera" and found out all of the above.

There is an instruction manual for the camera available at: https://www.imagesco.com/cmucam/CMU.pdf

The manual should answer most of your questions.

 

[iotaUser]

Re: line following robot

You might want to check the robotics vision system I am working on
www.embedded-vision.com/What_s_new/News/RoboticsVisionSystem.htm
It is designed on Philips LPC2138 and schematic is very simple. Source code is also available.