Onboard camera systems
Rawseeds’ sensor suite includes many vision components. Specifically, we used:
- binocular and trinocular black-and-white (B/W) vision;
- normal perspective, color and B/W cameras;
- omnidirectional color vision with hyperbolic mirror.
The binocular vision system is composed of a two-camera Videre Design STH-DCSG-VAR system (two FireWire, B/W, 640×480 pixel cameras mounted on a common mechanical frame that allows for an adjustable baseline).
Trinocular vision is obtained by combining the binocular STH-DCSG-VAR with an additional Videre Design DCSG camera (the same camera mounted by the STH-DCSG-VAR).
All three cameras of the trinocular system are forward-looking, and provide B/W monocular data streams. Color monocular vision (also forward-looking) is covered by an Unibrain Fire-i 400 camera (FireWire, color, 640×480 pixel). This is a lower-cost device, mounted on the robot to cover the kind of vision sensors that are most likely to be considered for commercial service robotics applications.
Finally, omnidirectional color vision is obtained by using a Prosilica GC1020C camera, configured with a Region Of Interest of 640×640 pixel and fitted with a hyperbolic mirror built by Vstone.
All cameras except the Unibrain one were set to a frame rate of 15Hz; the Unibrain camera operated with a 30Hz frame rate.