A microcontroller based motion control system for robotic eyes

• Main Author: Zheng, Jun.
• Other Authors: Low Kay Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Control and instrumentation::Control engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/17886
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Robotic eyes in this project refer to vision capability of a robot that mimic the human eyes to interface with the real world. They have been used in more and more applications such as in surveillance system, or as an integrated part of a humanoid robot. In this project, two low cost webcams are used as input of the robot eyes to identify and track a moving object. The input video is processed in real time with background estimation technique. Consequently, a moving object can be differentiate from the background and its movements will be computed to drive a pair of biaxial dc servo motor system so that the cameras could follow the object similar to a pair of typical human eyes. To control the dc servo motors, a high performance 16-bit microcontroller dsPIC is used. A PID controller is designed to perform a close loop feedback position control for the motors. This thesis covers both the hardware and software design of the robotic eyes system, as well as discussion on the results and problems encountered. Furthermore, recommendations for probable future developments are suggested.