Welcome to Synthiam!

The easiest way to program the most powerful robots. Use technologies by leading industry experts. ARC is a free-to-use robot programming software that makes servo automation, computer vision, autonomous navigation, and artificial intelligence easy.

Get Started
USA
Asked — Edited

Bot To Follow

Question, I am still working on my 1:1 R2 and I will be using saber tooth controller with my EZb. I am really wanting R2 to follow me at a certain distance when he is on auto (able to switch to my control at will as well) I have the EZ camera ( if that helps ) .. Has anyone out there mastered the way to do this ( bot follow..ect ) with switch to control via mobile ez app ( for iphone when it comes out ) ?


ARC Pro

Upgrade to ARC Pro

Synthiam ARC Pro is a cool new tool that will help unleash your creativity with programming robots in just seconds!

#1  
You can easily do this with colour tracking (wearing a red shirt or another colour of your choice)... Then in the camera control you would enable movement tracking (which allows the camera to control your sabertooth movement panel)... when R2 sees red he will drive towards it... You could also use a ping to monitor distance so he can be programmed to stop if he gets too close....
United Kingdom
#2  
Camera would be easiest as the control is already there.

Ping may work but could get complicated and have far more false positives (or wind up sitting looking at a wall).

Sound could be another option but, again, would be less accurate and more work than camera.
#3  
Thx guys, I was a bit uncertain as to how the camera would work with moving forward and following but that seems to be the way to go.. and then I am guessing some kind of code to swap over to mobile control for movement ?
#4  
One of the things I want to try when I get my kit (just left Hong Kong a few hours ago....) is to see if color tracking will follow an IR LED. I think putting a small bike light I have, swapping out the white LED for an IR one and wearing it on my ankle or wrist would be fairly unobtrusive (if it works, I would do a custom housing to make it even more subtle).

You can always take over manually just by using the movement panel, but once you stop, the automatic tracking will take back over, which may not be what you want. but a couple of buttons on the mobile interface to execute stop and start tracking scripts would be simple to implement.

Alan
#6  
i have done this using the Color tracker as indicated above. with the addition of a ping sensor so the robot will stop when it is so close. Using only the follow by color causes the robot to run into the object it was tracking.

I hope that helps. If you do need a script post again and when I'm done with the script I'm working on , I can help more.
#8  
You could either do color tracking, or you could attach qr codes to the back of your legs and back. Then have r2 stop based on a ping sensor reading.
#9  
I think with object tracking of a trained object you can also stop when the object is a certain "size" in the camera. So QR codes, a colored dot, etc...

Alan
#10  
I thought about the "size" thing. however, i think there will be alot of jerking about with artifact and false reads with that . I like the idea Luis had.. Now to try and implement it:)
#11  
@Luis Sounds like a great plan. Did you ever get a change to post the script for this?

Thanks
WayneA
#12  
I have not. at least that i know of. I will look around for it. it was on the ezb3 board but will work fine on the ezb4
#15  
I was thinking if EZ-B used PIR sensors we could train the droid to follow humans based on heat signatures... that way combined with the color or some form of IRDF tracking we could make it more realistic?

I was trying to see if anyone had any examples of using multiple sensors reading in a arrays to get best results (since those ultrasonics need a good algorithm to get better readings) and then return all 3 or 4 sensors feedbacks to allow the droid to make decisions during the follow me sequence... speed matching etc.

Makes sense... just need to be shown where to start with multi sensors...

Getting PIR sensors integrated would be great too if DJ is listening.
#16  
To be honest, I would just the camera control and some basic scripting... DJ has already gone through the trouble and done the work for you... What you want to do sounds like the "arduino" way of doing things... I would guess it would take a lot of programming...

By the way, PIR sensors are already "integrated" in ARC... I have used them in a few of my projects....

You can definitely accomplish what you want... but it does sound like specific "custom" programming....
Login to post a comment