A Colour Detection and Connected-Objects Separation Methodology for VEX Robotics

One of the issues associated with programming a VEX Robotics Competition (VRC) robot for the autonomous period is providing it with enough information regarding its environment so that it can move about the field intelligently. As such, an objective of our research was to develop a series of machine vision tools so that a VRC robot could identify VRC field elements, other robots, and field perimeters; responding appropriately. We have carried out a review of relevant literature and identified a number of algorithms, image processing tools, and control paradigms, as well as, developed our own approaches, which we have implemented in C++ using the OpenCV library. Here we present the results of our initial efforts, namely our implemented colour identification, connected-object separation, and multiple connected-objects separation methodologies.

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