Introduction and Initial Planning

Introduction

Recently, object identification and tracking technology has seen an increase in its day-to-day applications. For example, it is now being used to track lecturers and speakers in recordings of live sessions. This project was an attempt to explore this new and emerging field of technology.

The Colour Chaser is a stationary object tracking device, which tracks an object of a certain colour specified by the user. It consists of a webcam and a colour sensor mounted on a pan-tilt rotating mechanism. Two servo motors control the pan and tilt, respectively, to ensure that the camera always faces the object being tracked. The entire system is controlled by a Raspberry Pi 4 (model B), which utilises a combination of the sensor's colour readings and the webcam's video capture, to calculate the vertical or horizontal rotations required from the servos. here is a photo of the Colour Chaser in action:




Planning 

This is a Year-2 group project that was meant to be implemented in just four lab days (24 hours in total), during the second semester. Our first task as a group, was to find an interesting idea that would fit within the given time frame. During the first semester, aside from the meetings with our academic advisor, we held two group meetings, in which we discussed project ideas, as well as any paperwork that we needed to complete before we could work on the project. We decided to build an object tracking camera. Firstly, we reviewed various methods of establishing a connection between our device, and the object to be tracked. There are several ways to achieve this, such as using emitter and receiver modules, of radio or IR signals, on the object and the device respectively. At the end, we decided that we could demonstrate the same concept of object tracking using a simpler tracking property- colour- which is inherent to the object.

By the end of the semester, we had chosen our project idea, completed a few forms that were required by our university, and filled out an order request form containing details of all the components we expected to use for the project. One of the components- the pan-tilt servo controlled brackets- which was needed to rotate the camera around, was put on backorder; however, we were able to find a similar alternative part, and sent a new form to our department to order it.

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