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Ball Following

Purpose

Following a ball is a good test for visual tracking. This example uses the Simple Vision service to locate a bright orange ball and the drives the motors on a simulated CoroBot to follow it.

Description

The BallCourt service is required to make this example work. It provides the simulated environment which contains a CoroBot, a rectangular brick wall (so the ball and the robot cannot escape) and a ball that is given an initial speed. The ball does not lose any momentum due to friction because the ground and the walls are made "slippery".

The following is a screenshot of a CoroBot following a ball:

Ball Following

The Simple Vision service is provided with MRDS. It allows an object to be tracked based on its color. Ignore some of the labels. The UI is designed for hand/face tracking and gesture recognition.

Simple Vision UI

What happens when the robot catches the ball? Is it like a dog chasing a car?