RoboRealm

RoboRealm
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Robotics suite, Computer vision, Image analysis
Website www.roborealm.com

RoboRealm is an application for use in computer vision, image analysis, and robotic vision systems. RoboRealm provides a Windows-based GUI for experimenting with different modules that can be assembled in custom ways to achieve a desired result. The main goal behind RoboRealm is to translate visual input into actuator commands that can be used to move robots or trigger actions based on what a machine sees.

Many different algorithms are implemented: Blob and Particle Algorithms; Color Algorithms; Edge Detection; Filters; among other common computer vision functionality. As a tool for computer vision applied to robotics, it also includes methods for robot localization and basic navigation skills, and integration with common robotic sensors. There are also third party modules that like the AVM Navigator module that provides autonomous robot navigation based on the visual landmarks.

RoboRealm's GUI interface allows for intuitive exploration of very advanced concepts. Machine vision is a very complex field that requires many complex mathematical and programming concepts in order to be successful. RoboRealm provides the ability to 'play' with these algorithms in order to develop a better intuitive model on what an algorithm can do and how it can be successfully applied to a project. Values that change the behavior of vision algorithms can be adjusted with immediate changes to how the resulting image is processed. This streamlines the tweak, compile, run, rethink process needed when researching vision based algorithms using source code. RoboRealm connects to many input devices including webcams, static images, video files, IP cameras and various other imaging devices. Because of this it is possible to use image content from various sources for test purposes.

Vision systems are typically part of a larger robotic solution. Due to this RoboRealm includes various way in which it can be extended in order to accomplish a custom task. These extensions include embedded modules that allow scripting in various languages (VBScript, Python, and CScript), a plugin architecture that allows individuals to create custom modules that are incorporated into RoboRealm processing pipeline (DLL, pipes) and an API that provides server based functionality through simple XML remote procedure calls. Augmenting these three extension abilities are several modules that can produce and consume information generated by RoboRealm such that this information can be incorporated into your own system. "Read Variables", "Write Images", "Clipboard", etc. are a few that further enhance information exchange within RoboRealm. For further information about integration see Integration with RoboRealm

RobotRealm requires the Microsoft Windows operating system but leverages this by supporting a large variety of robotic and programming platforms, such as Surveyor, Lego Mindstorms NXT, Vex Robotics Design System, iRobot Create and Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio.

Highlights

Usage

RoboRealm can be accessed using the GUI or the API. The GUI provides intuitive access to complex algorithms. Once understood, the API, which is based on a socket based communication protocol, allows other systems to access RoboRealm from remote locations and using different languages to incorporate its capabilities into custom implementations.

The protocol is based on a tagged language.

  <request>
     <get_dimension>IMAGE_NAME</get_dimension>
 </request>
 <response>
     <width>IMAGE_WIDTH</width>
     <height>IMAGE_HEIGHT</height>
 </response>

    External links

    This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, February 02, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.