A spherical robot that I designed and fabricated is controlled with computer vision (CV) motion tracking. The CV is implemented in Max-MSP-Jitter. The robot's servos are driven by an Arduino microcontroller. Communication between the robot and the computer is via Bluetooth. The two axes of motion detected by the camera (built in on the laptop) regulate the signals to the two servos in the robot. When the tracked object, in this case a plastic easter egg, is in the center of the camera point of view (POV), the robot is stationary (though in this example it is difficult to find that perfect point). When the tracked object moves toward the edges of the camera POV the pulse width modulation to the servos is shifted to run the motors faster. The direction from center determines the direction of the rotation. The servos are standard hobby motors modified for 360 degree rotation.
Video from: blip.tv
