Is my reasoning ok?

[JavaRN]

With your experience, can you think of any simple processing techniques i can do on board with a microcontroller?

Unfortunately I've never worked with microcontroller for image recognition I always worked with Personal Computers, infact with my Robonova all the processing (both image recognition and movement) is done on the laptop, the robot simply performs what the program in the laptop tells it to do. Any way if the microcontroller language supports arrays (in assembly it is a little bit more difficult) you can do whatever processing you like. Since microcontrollers have limited memory (sometimes enough to hold just one camera shot), you can down sample an image to 5x7 a technique used in OCR and then pass it through a Kohonen Neural net to get the corresponding character or shape. You can write simple programs on your PC to gather a database of down-sampled images, store them in an SD card and then use a card reader on your robot such as this one:

http://www.active-robots.com/products/accessories/ummc.shtml

to compare images using various techniques, including Neural Networks, BUT again, I prefer the processing to be done on the PC as resources such as RAM, Storage space, and processing power are less limited.

Oops, I was going to forget, there is also the gumstix which you can use, they are quite powerful and I'm sure that for you it isn't difficult to interface it with your Robonova. You can also connect the CMU cam to this small computer and you can perform all of the things I've mentioned. I haven't chosen this technique for two reasons -
1. it is expensive
2. I surely don't have enough space in my RN for a gumstix!!!

Charles

[Humanoido]

I've found the drop in battery voltage to affect all systems. It would be worthwhile to have a new battery on hand and for testing or constantly meter the one in use. One of the things I use in all my robots is a power filtering system. Having a voltage regulator is very good but it also needs the filtering on the line. Every time a servo is engaged, there is a drain on the supplied power. It's like watering your garden with a water hose that has a flushing toilet on the same line, where the water hose may actually move a little due to the changes in the water supply. What works well is to introduce good filtering capacitors, some of small values and a larger one. This acts like a water reservoir taking care of the spikes. You should probably scope this out on an oscilloscope to see what's happening.

humanoido

[NovaOne]

One of the things I use in all my robots is a power filtering system

Hi Humanoido,

Other than capacitors, do use use inductors in your filter networks?

I liked your water analogy...great for beginners.

Chris

[i-Bot]

I missed this question in the earlier post.

The PWM ports are available for In and out as ports 46, 47 and 48.

[NovaOne]

The PWM ports are available for In and out as ports 46, 47 and 48.

Thats excellent, thanks Richard .

I think these are much more suitable/convenient ports to use for I2C, I will change mine over.

Chris