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Permalink Reply by Sgt Ric on December 9, 2009 at 10:48pm

Sounds like you mean the Kestral UAS.

Here's a video off their site.

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Permalink Reply by mook on December 9, 2009 at 10:59pm

Yea, watch the videos here
http://www.procerusuav.com/cameraControl.php

I want to make something similar, working on getting an ardupilot w/ camera setup ATM.

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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Lanehart on December 9, 2009 at 11:50pm

You are wanting something similar to this right?


That would be neat, setting a point for the camera to look at, ands while it flies it's mission, the camera stays centered on the object you selected.

I don't know what camera they are using or anything, but it is Arduino controlled:

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Permalink Reply by Morli_ on December 10, 2009 at 7:08am

@Benjamin,
How do you know it is controlled by Ardino( auto tracking face)?! If it is, nothing like it :). I was doing bit of research few months ago on this subject to find a solution for object tracking and camera stabilization. The nearest I got was few analytical video softwares which does it with much bigger price tag, I was hoping for combining such software talking to GCS and sending tracking info via RF modem to UAV using Millswood engineering failsafe PTZ .
I have one more usage of this function in my long wish list. That is to use a tracking antenna in UAV( like the one inside the Predator dome) to always point telemetry/video antenna towards home :-) , this looks doable from what I stamd , just we need to marry we things/Idea and products and wishing it hard enough to work...... Any one , any ideas, any one up for this challenge (using ardu antenna tracker in reverse order)?!!!, it looks to be less complex than video tracking. I have 2.4 antenna for the job( in UAV side) in mind.

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Permalink Reply by mook on December 10, 2009 at 12:04am

I think he means something like this

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Permalink Reply by Anthony Bee on December 10, 2009 at 6:50am

Ok dose any one have any afordable camra target tracting ideas lol
Sorry i dont have $5000 for procerusuav.com products
Posibly an open sorce??

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Permalink Reply by Dr Mike Black on December 10, 2009 at 11:28am

You guys ever thought about matlab with image & Processing blockset?

that allows you to this kind of thing, however, i dont know how well it will work with a moving cam & moving target?

I suspect its the algorythem that need the tweeking, but this software deos come with it....

just a thought..

and yes Procerus is the puppies, but it should be, all things considered...


Doc.

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Permalink Reply by Nicholas Budd on December 15, 2009 at 5:43am

I've been considering doing something similar, actually - one of the things I plan to use my UAV for (it's not finished yet) is aerial photography. I've been in Scouts all my life, and I'm doing my leadership training, and when my unit got a helmet camera to film activities, it occurred to me how cool it would be to be able to film stuff from the air. For some activities, it would be really useful - for example, when we go kayaking, the best place to stand to take photos from tends to be in the river, so having a UAV that could loiter at low-ish altitude and snap some action photos would be awesome.

I actually have a student version of MATLAB on my laptop, and it has the image processing toolbox. I'm not a fantastic programmer, but I'm learning - I'm getting pretty good with MATLAB, and I'm getting to grips with C++ for this UAV project of mine. I had thought that MATLAB's image processing functions would make it possible to write a program that recognises and follows an indicated object in a video feed (one of my lecturers showed me a UAV that some students entered into a MoD contest that did exactly that) but I'm not sure how to go about it, and I definitely don't know how to get the data passed between C++ and MATLAB, let alone via an Arduino. Does anyone have any ideas? I suppose I could ask my lecturer...

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on December 15, 2009 at 5:52am

At the risk of sounding a bit like an advertisement, I would suggest having a look at RoboRealm:

http://www.roborealm.com/

Can do very sophisticated object tracking from video and drive a lot of devices (including servo controllers) all in one application. Free for 30 days of playing, then not ridiculously expensive.

Andrew.

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Permalink Reply by Morli on December 15, 2009 at 3:52pm

Hi Andrew.
Thanks for the link , I have heard of this software mentioned some where else but never tried it. Will download the demo ver and try soon. Have you tried this software and what was your observation? What was your test setup?

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Dunlop on December 15, 2009 at 4:28pm

Hi Morli,

In the spirit of full disclosure I should mention that I am a reseller for RR, but I do so at cost plus expenses. I resell it because I use RR to support my hardware (sorry, another advertisement - www.millswoodeng.com.au)

I use RR for lots of things. Driving serial servo controllers under joystick control is my main application, but I've also written an Attopilot-compatible GCS in it. I even ported the GCS for the Ardupilot but I have not released it because it is untested and I don't have an Ardupilot to test it with.

RR is very robust and easy to use once you get to grips with it. Well worth the initial investment of time. Video image processing and servo / motor control is really its main focus.

Andrew.

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Permalink Reply by Baghdad_boy on February 24, 2010 at 3:41am

Hey Morli,

Roborealm is a great piece of software (damn it getting lots of advertising). If you wanna get started with it, check out some beginner tutorials at wwww.youtube.com/user/ChannelOfRobots. There is one on tracking.

The problem is, Roborealm doesn't have any object recognition yet. So you can't really track a car based on how it looks. You can track simple shapes like circles. And also based on color.

To track a car in Roborealm, you'll have to fina a distinctive characteristic about it that sets it apart from its surrounds. This may be that its the darkest object in the scene. Or that it has a distinct color (eg a yellow or red car driving on a grey road);

If you're really keen, maybe you can get into OpenCV. Its too hard for me but maybe you'll have more luck haha :D

Baghdad_boy

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