Robotics and the World/Robot Vision

9. Robot Vision

One of the most fundamental tasks that vision is very useful for is the recognition of objects (be they machine parts, light bulbs, etc) Evolution Robotics introduced a significant milestone in the near-realtime recognition of objects based on various points. The software identifies points in an image that look the same even if the object is moved, rotated or scaled by some small degree. Matching these points to previously seen image points allows the software to 'understand' what it is looking at even if it does not see exactly the same image.

As the hobbyist robotics market rapidly grows so too are the machine vision choices that the hobbyist has at their disposal. The CMUCam (initially created at Carnegie Mellon) is by far the most popular vision camera that can track an object based on its color and even move the camera if it is mounted on servos (small motors) to track the object. At a low price and basic usage it has become very widely used by hobby and academic roboticits.