Tracking System
IRIDIA is currently developing a Tracking System for the robots experiments taking place in the Robotics Arena. The purpose of the Tracking System is to detect the position of all the robots in the Arena, together with recording and storing the frames of the whole experiments.
Hardware
The tracking system is composed by a set of 16 cameras Prosilica GC1600 C, disposed as shown in File:Figure 1. The cameras are set in order to have a collective field of view that covers the entire area of the Arena. The cameras are connected to a dedicated computer, the Arena Tracking System Server, through Ethernet connection. The Arena Tracking System Server hosts the API that the users of the Tracking System can exploit to configure, run and record their experiments. (Ref: Alessandro Stranieri, Arena Tracking System)
Software
The Arena Tracking System's API are built on top of the Halcon library. Halcon is a library by MVTec Software GmbH, used for scientific and industrial computer vision applications. It provides an extensive set of optimized operators and it comes along with a full featured IDE that allows for fast prototyping of computer vision programs, camera calibration and configuration utilities. The library also provides drivers to easily interface with a broad range of cameras. (Ref: Alessandro Stranieri, Arena Tracking System)
Licence
IRIDIA owns a Floating Development Licence. That means that the library can be installed on any computer in the local network, but can be used by at most one of them at any time.
How to access Halcon from the Arena Tracking System Server
The Halcon library is hosted in the Arena Traking System Server. In order to use the library is necessary to access the node throgh Secure Shell. There are two available interfaces for this server:
IP alias bandwidth.
164.15.10.153 liebig.ulb.ac.be 1 Gbit.
169.254.0.200 10 Gbit
Adapter for the cameras
In case you need an adaptor for the cameras to attach them to a standard camera mount (e.g., Manfrotto), you can create one using the laser cutter. Here are the files: ecp version dxf version
