Merlin Systems Corp. Ltd Robot Soccer Engine V2.5 User Manual
Contents
1. Merlin Systems Corp Ltd Robot Soccer Engine V2 5 User Manual Robot Soccer System Installation Manual Contents Robot Soccer System Installation Manual 2 Contents aeann cacseendcctaans cosesasncecdacaapaevedsachaccedanboauavay cede ccaumeaatedangacnwiens 2 Operational Requirement ioien heera dengan edd SES Eed Edge 3 ste Un LE 4 HEEN eeh 4 Camera Installation Introducpon 5 Introduction to Lighting SysteMs ee eeeeessceeesesceceeseeeeecesseaeeecesaaeecseseeeeesees 5 Firewire Camera Setup Unibrain Pre 7 Firewire Camera Setup Unibrain Fire I 400 Industrial Camera 9 Firewire Camera Setup Micropix CA 11 HIR A Simulator Installapon POE EE EEE EEES 13 Robot Soccer Engine Installation ee ee eesceccessseeecesseeeeecesaececesececeesenaeecessaaeers 14 Robot Soccer Engine Setup c ccsssccccssscccnsnsosceteneneceosscsescesonncenensceeesonsaceses 15 Select the Pitch in the Images etrn rera eenia rnar niea KEE p ERSE airi 15 MASION SEMIN EE 16 Vision System Settings Overview eeeeeeeesseceeeesseeceeseaceecesaaeeeceseaeeeeeeaeeeeees 16 VaSION SYStCM SEP EE 18 NisiOn FA EE 23 Communication System PC Setup eeeeeeecccesssseecessaeeecesaeeeeessceceesesaeeeessaaeees 24 Robot Soccer Engine Communications Setup 26 Strate GIES yess EE ee Ee 28 Starting Stopping A Came eceeesesccccceecsesneneeceeeeceesesneeeeeeceeeseeneaaeeeeeeeeeesnenneeeeess 29 Burther Inform2. Here you are looking for each coloured patch to have a red cross in the center if this is not the case then you need to go back to looking at the scanlines to ensure the intensity is set correctly For a blob to be detected it also has to pass the size test defined by the min max values for height and width phase 2 settings Note the phase 1 max scan width and height settings must be as large as the max values defined here to work correctly It may be necessary to increase the total illumination in the room to get a good scan across all colours green is usually the most awkward for dark conditions and cyan for light conditions Assuming the blobs now have red markers on turn the show blob centers option off and turn on the show id option The last phase is down to colour settings which need to be determined in conjunction with the histogram display The first issue is to determine if the team colour yellow or blue is being correctly detected Using the left mouse button select the top left corner of a blue patch and then use the right mouse button to select the bottom right corner Next choose Select ROI from the options menu and then turn on the Histogram update from the View menu In the right hand pane select the Histogram tab Histogram of the currently selected ROI 0 180 360 To view the histogram select a Region Of Interest ROI This is done by using the left mouse button to select the
3. detect the blobs e Check that the brightness level is balanced correctly to give good quality scans at all positions in the pitch You may also need to alter the grey level detection thresholds e The change in illumination levels across the pitch may vary the hue values try extending the hue ranges to increase detection rates Communication System PC Setup A PC Bluetooth dongle is supplied that plugs into the USB port on the PC Follow the manufacturers instructions to install Once installed double click on the Bluetooth icon bottom right hand corner This will bring up an explorer window with my Bluetooth places Click on Entire Bluetooth neighbourhood and click F5 to search If other devices are turned on and in range you should get BY My Bluetooth Places Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood TOX File Edt View Bluetooth Favorites Tools Help ay Qax BD P seach E gt Folders Address My Bluetooth Places Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood Type Personal Computer My Documents i sani Major 31 d My Computer Unknown Major 31 Unknown Major 31 a My aes Smartphone Smart Pae Si Recycle Bin 4 D My Bluetooth Places J Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood e ALPHA Si mid20 mid22 SP mid27 Smartphone My Device The robot modules are identified as MIDxx To connect to device a right click on it and select pair with device At this point you will be prompted
4. h include lt strategy h gt include lt stdlib h gt include lt motion h gt BOOL APIENTRY DllMain HANDLE hModule DWORD ul_reason_for_call LPVOID IpReserved switch ul_reason_for_call case DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH case DLL_THREAD_ATTACH case DLL_THREAD_DETACH case DLL_PROCESS_DETACH break return TRUE extern C STRATEGY_API void Create Environment env extern C STRATEGY_API void Destroy Environment env extern C STRATEGY_API void Strategy Environment env 14 Open TwoPoints h and comment out the redundant lines The following ifdef block is the standard way of creating macros which make exporting from a DLL simpler All files within this DLL are compiled with the TWOPOINTS_EXPORTS symbol defined on the command line this symbol should not be defined on any project that uses this DLL This way any other project whose source files include this file see TWOPOINTS_API functions as being imported from a DLL wheras this DLL sees symbols defined with this macro as being exported ifdef TWOPOINTS_EXPORTS define TWOPOINTS_API __declspec dllexport else define TWOPOINTS_API __declspec dllimport endif This class is exported from the TwoPoints dll class TWOPOINTS_API CTwoPoints public CTwoPoints void TODO add your methods here E extern TWOPOINTS_API int nT woPoints TWOPOINTS_API int fnTwoPoints void 15 Build
5. max blobwidth and blobheight determine the maximum scanwidth and scanheight When scanning the grey level test is performed on each pixel therefore the grey test settings are crucial Also the adaptive grey test has a substantial bearing on the quality of the initial blob recognition Phase 3 Blob Test Check x and y scan lengths are within limits Find mid point of new blob Phase 4 Blob Link Phase Check blob mid point against all previous blobs to ensure it is not a duplicate Check if a blob close by may be linked with this one and store a link If it is not a duplicate then store it in the blob list Store hue value with blob e The link phase relies on finding one team colour blob and two other blobs must be within 20 pixels and not closer than 5 pixels of the team colour blob Phase 5 Colour Test Test the blob to determine the colour Lookup the colour values and assign a robot id Appendix D Coordinate Systems Robot Soccer Engine Game objects include the robots and other elements such as the pitch and the goal areas Angles are calculated where 0 degrees is up north Angles continue clockwise like a compass 270 90 180 When play is from left to right the x axis is positive from left to right and the y axis is positive from 0 at the top increasing toward the bottom 0 0 ______ When play is from right to left the axis are reversed and the origin is in the bottom right ha
6. startup The FIRA simulator by default expects dll s to be located in the strategy blue and strategy yellow directories To modify these values you need to alter the system cfg in the config directory directly You should refer to the FIRA simulator documentation for more information on writing strategy dll s The default strategy dll x1 dll provides an example striker strategy to get you started Strategy Settings Blue Strategy CANELLA V Loaded Yellow Strategy c strategy yellow yell Loaded Play Settings Play Direction right Team Colour blue Frame Delay jo Update Pitch Settings mm Width 1200 Length iso o The other settings are displayed for information and are defined in the system cfg file The application does not at present support alternate settings for these parameters Starting Stopping A Game A game can be started or stopped from the main menu GamelStart Stop The system requires that all the devices selected as active in the Bluetooth tab are turned on and have been paired The system will hang if this is not the case although will usually recover as soon as the ports are connected During the game for each frame received from the camera the vision system module is called to detect all the players and the ball These coordinates are then used to populate the structure defined in the FIRA simulator strategy h file The entry point for the strategy DLL is then called where the strategy cod
7. the hub and attach the hub to your computer using the supplied cable rear view RE IW y Bug F Software Installation Follow the installation instructions provided by the camera manufacturer on disk Once installed run the Fire I application select to view the video stream by double clicking on the available camera If you are unable to select a camera then there is a problem with the software and or hardware installation check the green LED is showing on the camera 4 Fire i BEE Action Settings Preview View Help lin A Elin ss me EX DCAM 1394 4130218 r Format Selection Pixel Format kung E Resolution 640x480 E Frame Rete EU Memory Presets 5 Care r Stream Control E Preview D Tige O Video Capture I Frame Capture D I Streaming d For Help press F1 CCI Da oS e ARemeo obt Ha 61 Crem fan vso n TE PAAA gA 1530 Settings Y_MONO 640x480 30fps Preview Menu RAW Mode Conversion gt RGGB The micropix camera supplies raw CCD images and it is necessary to process the image in software to recover image colour information Adjusting camera focus The Micropix camera is supplied with a suitable CS mount zoom lens This lens has two manual focus adjustment rings and a third aperture adjustment middle ring Set the aperture ring to fully open and then use the other two rings to maximise the pitch image FIRA Simula
8. to enter a password by clicking on the blue tray icon bottom right Key in the pass code 1234 Once paired with a device you need to right click again and select discover services which should after a short wait come back with SPP slave Right click on this icon and it will be connected as a virtual COM port The actual COM port number will depend on other devices in your system Keep a note of each robot and the COM port it connects on Tip To work out the COM port that the module has been installed on ensure that explorer is configured to display the status bar Then click on the module in the left hand pane The module COM port number is then displayed in the status bar To connect more than one robot you will need to configure some further serial ports The actual setup will vary depending upon the Bluetooth host software installed but here is an example Right click on the Bluetooth tray icon select setup configuration Select client applications and then at the bottom of the panel should be a button Add COM port After selecting enter a name for the connection e g MIABOT1 and select an available COM port Repeat this step for each additional COM port required It is now a good idea to confirm that communications have been established by using a terminal program such as Hyperterminal Setup a new connection for the selected Com ports such as COM4 with 19200 n 8 1 no handshaking Disconnect the c
9. 1 5a RobotSoccer exe 4 Set the working directory to be blank 5 Now run the Simulator Application from within MSDEV Once running you will be able to set a breakpoint in your Strategy entry point you need to wait for the TwoPoints DLL to be cached while the Robot Soccer Engine loads 6 Click on the Strategies menu item 7 Enter TwoPoints under the Blue Team field and click the Lingo tab to turn it to C 8 Change the Yellow Team field to be black and click on the Lingo tab to turn it into C 9 Click the send button RobotSoccer amp STRATEGIES C C ED START Referee TIME 0 00 SCORE des TIME SCORE amp NEW GAME amp HELP 10 Now click on the start button 11 Execution will now stop on your break point Further Information Miabot BT User Guide Miabot Pro User Guide FIRA Simulator User Manual Fire I Installation Guide Bluetooth Dongle Installation Instructions Micropix Technical Guide Appendix A Player 3 Player 2 Player 1 Player 4 Player 5 see docs playerlids 5vs5 cdr and docs playerlids 5vs5 pdf Appendix B Player ID Assignment Player ID Primary Secondary Colour1 Colour1 Colour2 Colour2 Colour3 Colour3 Colour3 Colour2 Colour2 Colour3 Team colour patch is in the top left quadrant Primary Patch is diagonally opposite the team colour Secondary Patch is smaller than the primary and in the botto
10. at RGB 24 Bit Resolution 640 Xx 480 e Unibrain Fire i 1 2 3920 Frame Rate 15 0 Action Settings Preview View Help Memory Presets es Stream Control M Preview Trigger Video Capture TT Frame Capture E ICP Streaming lt For Help press F1 At this point a live video stream will be displayed from the camera in a separate window and the green led will turn orange to indicate the camera is active Select the Pixel Format as RGB 24 Bit Resolution 640 x 480 amp frame rate at 15fps The next step is to align the pitch and adjust the camera focus For this step it is best to have the monitor or laptop screen visible from where you stand to adjust the camera Change the height of the camera until all the sides of the pitch are just visible If the pitch becomes too small then you will loose resolution and impact the colour detection performance Next adjust the focus ring on the camera until the pitch image is sharp Close the Fire I video stream the application can remain in the background Firewire Camera Setup Unibrain Fire 400 Industrial Camera Connect the camera to your PC Position the camera approximately 2 65m above the pitch To power the camera it is necessary to use a firewire hub with external power supply Plug the camera into an outlet port on the hub and attach the hub to your computer using the supplied cable Oe NR rear view Software Ins
11. ation ENEE riiin eei iiiaae NEE EENS 30 ena A EE 41 see Mlocsvwlaverhde Avsn cht 42 and docs playerlids 5vs5 pf 42 Appendix B Player ID Asstgnment 43 Appendix C Introduction to the vision detection system ceeeeseceeeeereeeeeneeeees 44 Vision E Li LEE 44 Phase 1 Define Scan Grid otonio hirere e eE ern E RRR a EERE 44 Phase 2 Cross Test at each grid pospon Ad Phase 3 BIOD KE 45 Phase 4 Blob Link Phase 45 Phase 5 Colour KEE 45 Appendix D Coordinate Systems 46 Robot Soccer Engine 23 cece sche ket cases seers Eug Eege EENS 46 Vision System Tee AU 47 Strategy DLL Coordinate System ccccccccccessssnececeeceeeeesneaeeeeeeeseesneneeeeeeeeeses 47 Strategy DLL Coordinate System eee eeessceccessseeceeseaceecesseceeeceneaeeesenaeeeeees 48 Operational Requirements Windows XP Laptop or PC with Firewire compliant port DirectX 9 0c or above Processor 2GHz Ram 512mb Disk Space 50mb Display Resolution 1280x1024 32 bit Introduction Robot Soccer is a challenging multidisciplinary activity that encompasses a number of active research areas such as real time colour vision artificial intelligence mobile robotics cooperative control and many others It is also an activity that is fun and is an activity that engages student interest and forms a core component in many under graduate and graduate level studies We have continued to simplify and make this technology as acce
12. ction for example more than the max blob width height values as this will impact performance Vision colours settings There are six distinct colour regions of interest Each team must have a distinct colour yellow or blue and each player must be identified by a distinct colour usually red green or blue although these can change considerably and a ball which is orange The Min Max hue values can be set for each of these types To determine the hue value use the histogram function to find the hue range by first selecting the region of interest see discussion below Grey amp White Level thresholds Use defaults Vision System Setup The lighting conditions form an important part of setting up the vision system The first step is to eliminate daylight from your setup The reason for this is that the amount of blue light varies throughout the course of a day which therefore requires frequent recalibration of hue values The other crucial factor is to achieve a consistent illumination level across the entire surface of the pitch clouds and shadows have a detrimental effect on performance Also be aware of light reflected from walls onto the pitch this will reflect light of varying hues dependant upon the colour of the wall across the surface of the pitch causing variable recognition problems Stable even illumination is the starting point for your vision system setup The system is supplied with some sample robot lids cut th
13. d position your monitor such that it is easily visible whilst adjusting the camera This is necessary to ensure the maximum pitch image is acquired and that the image is correctly focussed this step is performed once the Fire I software is installed Robni Anerer he rempkte ship Introduction to Lighting Systems The chosen lighting system will have significant implications for the overall performance of the vision recognition system The actual Fira regulations are rather vague on the performance of the lighting system stating that the lighting should provide a consistent 1000 lux across the surface of the pitch No tolerances are given or type of light is specified There are three commonly used types of lighting system Halogen Tungsten Filament Fluorescent Halogen lights tend to produce very bright focused beams of tinted blue light To use these effectively in robot football it is necessary to bounce the light off a diffusing surface to create an even illumination across the entire surface of the pitch The blue tint to the light does not usually cause any problems Tungsten filament lights are usually only moderately bright and fairly diffuse They produce a yellow light and are probably the most common household lighting system It is often difficult to get the very bright even light using this type of lighting system although it is very often adequate for practical use it falls short of the quality expected for international
14. e current grid sampling positions The spacing of the grid can be altered via the x step and y step settings Show blob centers when activated a small cross is placed on top of every detected blob A blob is a grouping of non background pixels which match the blob height and width criteria see below Show scan lines when activated uses a green line to indicate continuous lines of non background pixels discovered during frame processing The maximum scan height and width can be set see below Show blob link when activated will draw a line between two blobs that have been detected as belonging to a particular player If the colours have been detected then this line is drawn using the colour of the detected player green blue or red Display image no longer supported Show Ball when activated a small white cross will be displayed on top of the ball This is useful when multiple balls are being detected GridXStep amp GridYStep The vision module samples pixels across the pitch with the spacings specified in these boxes If these are too low performance will be affected too large and detection rates will drop Min Max blobs widths and heights every frame will always have a certain amount of noise and falsely detected blobs These values allow only areas of a certain size to be selected as potential blobs of interest Max scan width height There is no point scanning more than a certain number of pixels in a given dire
15. e path to the application include directory e g include for the example above when your project is installed in user TwoPoints 8 At the end of the Preprocessor definitions field add the symbol STRATEGY_EXPORTS 9 From the link tab select input from the category drop down list 4 TwoPoints cpp H Header Files Resource Files B ReadMe bt Setings For Win32 Debug General Debug C C Link Resources up EI Coccov SO Objectlibrary modules kermel32 lib user32 lib gdi32 lib winspool lib comdlg32 lib adva Ignore libraries T Ignore all default libraries Eorce symbol references Additional library path kemel32 lib user32 lib gdi32 lib winspool lib comdlg32 lib jadvapi32 lib shell32 lib ole32 lib oleaut32 lib uuid lib lodbc32 lib odbccp32 lib nologo alll incremental yes tu of CS SHeerGMOsRBOQO Binpe l 2mer J33wng J7engpe T tworot E Docume 10 In the object library module list add motion lib 11 In the addition library path add the path to the relevant lib install directory e g lib debug 12 Select the General category within the Link tab and then change the output filename to be c strategy blue TwoPoints dll this will mean the file can be run from the default simulator directory as the blue team change this if you need a yellow team version etc 13 Open the TwoPoints cpp and change the file to look like include stdafx
16. e then calculates the left right wheel speed for each robot and transmits this is then communicated to each robot in turn via the radio system Creating a new strategy 1 Load Microsoft Visual Studio Version 6 eee 2 Select Filel New from the main menu 3 Select Win32 Dynamic Link Library and select a project directory e g lt install dir gt user and project name e g TwoPoints ATL COM AppWizard d Audio Effect DMO Wizard jatabase Project evStudio Add in Wizard DirectMusic Tool Wizard DirectX 9 AppWizard K Extended Stored Proc Wizard R ISAPI Extension Wizard Makefile I MFC Activex ControlWizard i MFC AppWizard alll BB MFC App Wizard exe bi Utility Project a Win32 Application Win32 Console Application Win32 Static Library Win32 Dynamic Link Library Step 1 of 1 5 Click Finish TwoPoints Microsoft Visual C Cax IAS Si ints 1 pr E TwoPoints files CD 4 Source Files StdAtccpp TwoPoints cpp Header Files Resource Files E ReadMe tt 6 From the main menu select projectlsettings click on the C C tab and then select pre processor from the drop down list Ed Workspace TwoPoints 1 project s TwoPoints files Source Files StdAf cpp TwoPoints cpp Header Files GResource Files E ReadMe tt i Project Settings D 5 7 In the additional include directories enter th
17. ed The Gain Factor is a global speed gain and is multiplied to all velocity settings sent out to each robot Note when updating these settings the system attempts to communicate with each robot The system may appear to hang whilst this is occurring particularly if some Bluetooth modules are out of range or turned off When starting or stopping a game if the system appears to have hung use alt tab to switch to the Bluetooth explorer window Check that each module is connected or make the connection The system should recover once the connections have been re established It is only necessary to enter the security code once for each robot unless it is powered down again The checkbox next to each robot indicates if commands should be sent to that robot during play it is often easier to check this for each robot in turn before turning all the robots on Take careful note of the sequence in which Bluetooth modules are connected because this affects the COM port that is designated to each in turn For example the first COM port connected is probably COMS depending on your systems configuration this could be any module e g MID31 or MID27 the actually arrangement is purely defined by the connection sequence Strategies The Robot Soccer Engine uses the strategy format defined by the FIRA Soccer Simulator The Strategy settings box below indicates the actual dll that the system is looking for and whether it was found and loaded at
18. ese out and place them on the pitch The vision system parameters have all been setup to work with these colours so with luck you should get good recognition rates immediately although this may well vary with different light sources such as incandescent fluorescent and tungsten To check the detection rates turn the video update off View VideoUpdate You can then see the recognition rates for each robot and the ball displayed in blue at the bottom of the live video area When setup correctly the recognition rates should all be 90 You will also notice that the application draws the position of each robot in the main window and will update the positions constantly with each frame It is a good idea to turn on the ShowID option in the vision systems settings panel If you do not get good recognition results then you need to check each phase of the vision system is performing correctly First turn on the grid and scanlines vision system options Turn the live video update back on and look carefully for white lines over coloured regions it helps if you click in the video window whilst looking for these lines If the scanlines look to be the full length of the coloured region this is a good sign that the overall intensity of the image is o k If there are excessive scan lines over the white markings of the pitch it may mean that the intensity is set a too high Next turn the scanlines option off and turn the show blob centers option on
19. f you have a particularly coloured light source It is almost always preferable to leave this in auto mode Note Micropix C640 camera does not have an auto mode so it is necessary to setup these dialogs manually Start by moving U B to maximum and V R to minimum Move shutter and expo to maximum and reduce the gain to around the mid point The other settings should not need adjustment Properties Video Format Configuration Camera Info Exposure Color Basic Auto One Push ug J v VIR con zem You can also try altering the black level if you are having problems with over scanning during the blob detection phase For most situations these settings should be left on auto Properties Video Format Configuration Camera Info Exposure Color Basic Auto E a Sech Black Level Seel D Sharpness Gamma If you are still experiencing recognition problems then try experimenting with different coloured patches for the player id s Poor recognition rates will directly affect performance when playing a game It is also a good idea to check that robots can be detected well in each of the four corners although it is normal to get some loss of recognition levels towards the extremities Recognition rates in excess of 100 indicates that an object is being detected multiple times within a given frame usually the ball To prevent false detections try reducing the hue range for the object being detec
20. he name of our new dll Save the file and close it strategymodules bluedemo TwoPoints dll yellowdemo yellowdemo dll 18 Run up the Robot Soccer Engine application remember to setup your Vision System Bluetooth communications etc gt the application above works with Robot 1 change the variable RobotID to different values to test each robot and the select Start Game from the main menu Debugging a strategy interactively with the robot soccer engine 1 Select projectlsettings from the main menu Select the Debug tab and select General settings 3 Use the browse button to find the rsmain exe in your installation directory C work RobotSoccerBT bin release RS Main exe 4 Set the working directory to be the same directory C work RobotSoccerBT bin release 5 Now run the Robot Soccer Application from within MSDEV Once running you will be able to set a breakpoint in your Strategy entry point you need to wait for the TwoPoints DLL to be cached while the Robot Soccer Engine loads Debugging a strategy interactively with the simulator Note Before starting copy motion dll from your lt app dir gt bin debug to the same directory where RobotSoccer exe is installed e g C Program Files Robot Soccer vl 5a 1 Select projectlsettings from the main menu Select the Debug tab and select General settings 3 Use the browse button to find the robotsoccer exe in your installation directory C Program Files Robot Soccer v
21. ive image Use the left mouse button and click the position of the top left corner then use the right mouse button and select the bottom right corner Next select pitchsettinglSelect Pitch In Image from the main menu These settings will then be saved to the system cfg file If the pitch or camera is moved then this step will need to be repeated The black lines drawn around the perimeter of the pitch may be difficult to see when live video is being display by clicking anywhere in the video image you can sometimes get a better view of the lines or select ViewlVideo Update to turn the live display off Vision Settings The Robot Soccer Engine has been developed to enable various modules to be independently developed and integrated For example strategies are developed into standalone DLL s which can be directly used with the FIRA simulator The vision module is plugable such that users can develop their own modules and run with these instead The commonly used settings are all available from the Robot Soccer Engine GUI but all these settings get written to the system cfg bin config which contains all the configuration information for the Robot Soccer Application This is a text file and can be opened in most text editors e g notepad It is a good idea to keep a backup copy of the system cfg once you have configured a working system Vision system settings Overview Show grid toggles the display of th
22. lighting Fluorescent lighting tubes are the most commonly used lighting system for robot soccer Typically 4 long tubes are used in parallel with integral diffusers to provide even illumination across the whole surface of the pitch Fluorescent tubes oscillate at different frequencies depending on the main supply frequency This can cause problems but most cameras enable this effect to be negated by synchronising the frame capture rate with the mains frequency or adjusting the shutter speed to be a multiple of the relevant mains frequency It is important to note that the actual hue ranges given in the examples below will vary under different lighting conditions It is necessary to experiment with colour patches to optimise the setup for your lighting system Firewire Camera Setup Unibrain Fire l Position the camera approximately 2 65m above the pitch Attach a 9 12V DC supply to power the camera When powered the camera LED turns green Attach the Firewire cable to the camera large end and the other end to your PC Laptop Follow the installation instructions provided by the camera manufacturer on disk Once installed run the Fire I application select to view the video stream by double clicking on the available camera If you are unable to select a camera then there is a problem with the software and or hardware installation check the green LED is showing on the camera COX EE e ofo m APH Maes Format Selection Pixel Form
23. m right corner relative to the primary patch and team colour Appendix C Introduction to the vision detection system The vision module uses colour intensity and shape to identify objects of interest on a 2 dimensional surface in typical indoor lighting conditions Each team has a colour patch which is blue or yellow and two other patches to code a player id see Appendix A The vision system uses a hue based colour detection system Although in theory hue is independent of light intensity in practice there is quite a variation in recorded hue values across a typically lit pitch surface From years of experimentation we have found that the best strategy for detecting robots is to use a coding system see below when more than 3 player colours are required unless expensive tri colour ccd camera equipment is going to be used Vision Algorithm Phase 1 Define Scan Grid Define a grid based upon framex framey stepx and stepy The limits of the pitch and defined by startx endx starty and endy To change these values use the select pitch in image from the main menu left mouse button defines the top left corner right mouse button defines the bottom right Phase 2 3 and 4 are performed for each point of the defined grid Phase 2 Cross Test at each grid position Scan Right Scan Left Scan Down Scan Up Find Mid Point of the y Axis Check Y length is within size limits Use mid point of y chord Scan right Scan left The
24. nd corner 0 0 Vision System Module Vision system coordinates are defined in screen pixels The origin is at the top left hand corner 0 0 W ____ __ Strategy DLL Coordinate System O deg is facing right black triangle determines the front angles are anticlockwise 180 angles are counterclockwise 180 90 180 0 90 Coordinates are in inches multiply by 2 54 to convert to mm 0 0 is bottom left X is positive from left to right Y is positive from bottom to top 0 0
25. onnection and then select properties from the file menu Click on the settings tab and then select ASCII setup Select Send line ends with line feeds and Echo typed characters locally Select OK and then make the connection Type a command e g t which should responds with t0 The command responds with t followed by a byte indicating the robots ID set from the dip switches as the back of the robot You can try various other commands by referring to the available commands in the communication protocol section in the Miabot BT or Miabot Pro user manual Robot Soccer Engine Communications Setup To setup the Bluetooth communications it is a good idea to keep the Bluetooth explorer window available in the background and use Alt Tab to switch between them Start by testing a single player and build up to running all three players together The test button is provided to ensure that you are communicating with the robot effectively and it is the one you think it is ICOM13 19200 n 8 1 AIG Bien SITE ath SS The advanced settings are used to send out initialisation strings to tune the internal PID values of each robot The default values should be acceptable but the parameters are PID Command Counter decimation rate recalculation rate Rate of power ramp 0 127 add subtraction factor to speed Speed Error Gain scale error in speed Integral Gain cumulative error in spe
26. rbt setup exe Robot Soccer Engine 2 0 Robot Soccer Engine 2 0 Created by Merlin Systems Corp Ltd Web site htto Awww merlinsystemscorp co uk Email address suppor merlinsystemscorp co uk Telephone 44 0 1752 764205 Tarma Installer will lead you through the steps required to install or upgrade Robot Soccer Engine 2 0 on your computer To continue click Next Copyright c 2003 Merlin Systems Corp Ltd This program is protected by copyright law and international treaties Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this program or any portion of it is a violation of applicable laws About lt Back Next gt Cancel Connect the Firewire camera and ensure power is supplied Then from the main menu launch the Robot Soccer Engine Application You may get some warnings regarding strategy files not being found but ignore these for the moment After loading you should see a screen similar to below press the play button on the toolbar or select Grab ModelResume from the main menu You should then see live frames displayed in the main window see below Robot Soccer Engine Setup RSMain Untitled _ x Fie Pitch Settings Grab Mode Game Options View Help e il gt D Ready j Ss SHLV F MOBO AG is 3 v Ld B Robo 15 cacu s svat 8 ne Rsm e a GAM 12 36 Select the Pitch in the image It is necessary to let the engine know the boundaries of the pitch in the l
27. re not detected or the white scan lines are very small A Try increasing the image brightness Ensure that the lens aperture is set to maximum and that the shutter and exposure settings are at maximum before increasing the gain setting to keep image noise at a minimum Also the grey level threshold may be set too high Experiment with adjusting the absolute grey level threshold Q When I use show scanlines there are white scanlines all over the pitch how do I fix this A The image is probably too bright Use the video settings dialogue to adjust the brightness level using gain and shutter levels Q Blobs are detected fine but the actual robots are not identified what is wrong A The most likely problem is the hue settings for the individual colours If no robots are detected then there is probably a problem with the detection of the team colour blue or yellow Use the histogram and show hue id to diagnose which colours are being detected If the actual separation between hue values needs adjusting use the Colour tab in the Vision Settings dialogues to adjust the values Q My robot is detected in the middle but not at the edges of the pitch how do I fix this A There are a number of areas to look at e It could be that the pitch is not maximised in the centre of the grabbed image e Check the camera is correctly focussed can centered e Check that the vision system is scanning on a fine enough grid space settings to
28. ssible as possible to students at all levels and we are now able to offer Interactive Robot Soccer packages that link directly to high school level curriculum modules Merlin Systems Corp Ltd is an active member of the Robot Soccer community and we continue to develop our products with the active support of our customer base Thank you for purchasing the Merlin Robot Soccer system and we look forward to working with you on this project and other robot related projects Support You can get free technical support from Merlin Systems Corp Ltd via email or our community forums hosted on our website Email support merlinsystemscorp co uk Forums www merlinsystemscorp co uk gt follow link to support and select Forums from the menu Camera Installation Introduction There are a number of camera models that can be supplied with the Merlin Robot Football system The following section gives a brief introduction to installing the most commonly supplied Firewire camera systems In all cases it these notes should be read in conjunction with the manufacturers installation instructions In all cases when setting up the camera the aim is to achieve a sharp focused picture that fills almost the whole image frame but also allows all sides of the pitch to be visible If the camera is not setup correctly then vision recognition rates will be substantially reduced Once you have attached the camera to your lighting frame fixings not supplie
29. tallation Follow the installation instructions provided by the camera manufacturer on disk Once installed run the Fire I application select to view the video stream by double clicking on the available camera If you are unable to select a camera then there is a problem with the software and or hardware installation check the green LED is showing on the camera At this point a live video stream will be displayed from the camera in a separate window and the green led will turn orange to indicate the camera is active Select the Pixel Format as RGB 24 Bit Resolution 640 x 480 amp frame rate at 15fps Ea Frei lej x Action Settings Preview View Help odola AS eine Ss e gt eae le r Format Selection Pixel Format RGB 24 Bit d Resolution 640 x 480 EI Frame Rate 15 0 gi Unibrain Fire I 400 1 2 r Memory Presets ma r Stream Control E Preview on D wi it C Frame Capture T TOP Streaming L se i For Help press F1 Za SROrFMOBOQOL Ha 5 mtr temp 2 m Jee Trei AAAS WQS 15 5 Adjusting camera focus e Refer to the C Mount lens attachment procedure in the installation docs directory Firewire Camera Setup Micropix C 640 Connect the camera to your PC Position the camera approximately 2 4m above the pitch To power the camera it is necessary to use a firewire hub with external power supply Plug the camera into an outlet port on
30. ted You can also experiment with increasing the minimum blob width height settings All the settings are saved to the system cfg file in the installation config directory Once you have established a good set of values it is a good idea to take a backup of this file as a known good configuration When changing from a yellow team to a blue team type the values into the TeamA settings box the TeamB box is for detecting the opposing team but is not currently supported in this release Player ID Primary Secondary Colour1 Colour1 Colour2 Colour2 Colour3 Colour3 Colour3 Colour2 Colour2 Colour3 Team colour patch is in the top right quadrant Primary Patch is diagonally opposite the team colour bottom left Secondary Patch is smaller than the primary and in the bottom right corner relative to the primary patch and team colour see Appendix A The hue values typed into the Colourl Colour2 and Colour3 boxes indicate which players are assigned to which player number internally see table above so typically Colour is green Colour2 is cyan and Colour3 is a pink magenta colour Robot in the vision settings dialog is matched with Robot in the Bluetooth communications dialog and so on It is possible for hue values to overlap with a range from 340 to 30 for example in this case the min value has the higher number The vision recognition module supports this type of overlap Vision FAQ Q When I use show scanlines some blobs a
31. the project and now you will have developed an empty project file 16 Alter the strategy entry point in TwoPoints cpp to oscillate between two points on the pitch extern C STRATEGY_API void Strategy Environment env int RobotID 0 speed 25 Vector3D target1 5 5 0 Vector3D target2 40 30 0 Vector3D currentTarget 0 0 0 static int point 0 bool bRes false if point 0 currentTarget x target1 x currentTarget y target1 y else currentTarget x target2 x currentTarget y target2 y int des_angle int aimfor RobotID currentTarget false env double dis distance currentTarget env gt home RobotID pos if dis lt 10 int diffAngle abs d des_angle env gt home RobotID rotation if diffAngle lt 5 amp amp dis lt 10 bRes true else if env gt home RobotID velocityLeft lt 20 amp amp diffAngle gt 5 amp amp diffAngle lt 175 RotateTo des_angle speed RobotID env true else MoveTo des_angle speed RobotID env true else MoveToOld des_angle speed RobotID env true UpdateObjectHistory env move to the next position if bRes if point 0 point 1 else point 0 17 To run the program with a real robot open the system cfg in lt app install gt bin config in a text editor Locate the strategymodules section and change the name after the equals sign to be t
32. top left corner and the right mouse button to select the bottom righthand corner in the video image Then select the ROI using Option Set Hue Magenta Line Red Red Level Green Green Level Blue BlueLevel The scale along the bottom of the graph is divided into 10 unit steps The magenta line defines the range of hue values for the currently select ROI Region Of Interest Make a note of the min and max extents of the range and type these into the Team A min max box on the vision systems settings tab Repeat this process for each of the player id colours and the ball making sure that the hue values do not overlay with other settings Turn the video update off and check that the vision recognition rates are 90 or above for each player and the ball If you are still not achieving good recognition rates you can experiment with changing the video settings Options Video Settings The exposure tab sets the basic illumination level If you have to set the gain very high when auto is off then the total light level may need to be increased Properties Video Format Configuration Camera Info Exposure Color Basic S Auto e a Shutter y issoms W Gain 0 The camera will perform an auto white balance when the auto box is checked in the Colour settings tab This means that the separation between the R G amp B channels for white and black will be optimised to be close together You can perform this step manually i
33. tor Installation A full 3D simulation environment is provided for 5 vs 5 robot football this application can also be used to simulate 3 vs 3 by moving players off screen Please note this is not a Merlin Systems Corp Ltd product From the main installation disk run the R_Soccer_v15a_030204 exe executable located in the simulator directory amp STRATEGIES Free Ball Penalty Free Kick Goal Kick Yellow Ball Blue Ball amp START Referee TIME 0 00 SCORE 0 e TIME SCORE amp NEW GAME amp HELP Follow the onscreen installation instructions There is a html manual included with this system which describes the steps necessary to create your own simulation strategies Note It is important to install the FIRA simulator prior to installing the Robot Soccer Engine the Robot Soccer Engine installation copies some sample strategies into the strategy directory that the simulator installation creates The FIRA simulator provides an offline environment to build robot football strategies that can then later be seamlessly integrated and run with the Merlin Robot Soccer Engine This enables complex strategies to be much more rapidly developed and debugged Using Microsoft Visual Studio it is possible to use the debugger to single step through complex strategy code set breakpoints for certain conditions and write information to log files for later analysis Robot Soccer Engine Installation Location c robotsocce
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