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William Wong - Honorable Mention (Yarley, Pennsylvania)
Video Grid Sensor
Downloads for this project:
All files and information © 2006 William Wong.
Project Description:
The VGS (Video Grid Sensor) is an intelligent camera peripheral designed to identify objects by color. The VGS can be used to identify obstacles, other objects and landmarks by color. It can recognize colors on the floor to perform functions such as line following. The VGS can be used to determine basic range and position of objects when used in a restricted environment such as a robot maze.
The VGS performs most recognition functions relieving the host processor of this task as well as reducing the amount of data that needs to be exchanged between the VGS and host. For example, the VGS camera chip generates more than 64K pixels per image. At three bytes per cell this translates into 192Kbytes of information. This translates to 2.8Mbytes/s at 15 frames/s. That is a lot of data and wellabove the capabilities of most small processors like the Basic Stamp. The VGS processes this data at the full data rate and condenses the results down to a few bytes that a host processor can quickly utilize. The VGS makes video image processing practical for small robots.
Communication with the VGS is handled through two unidirectional serial connections. It can be controlled by a simple microcontroller like the BASIC Stamp or Javelin Stamp. The VGS communications protocol automatically detects the baud rate. Allowable baud rates include 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38500 and 57600 baud.
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