Robotic vision is one area of robotics that has proved to be challenging. Although you can use a Web camera to simply stream images as a bitmap, this is typically not useful if you need the robot to act based on what it observes. It gets even more complicated if you need to identify and categorize specific objects, for example, if you need the robot to distinguish a cat from a dog. Even the task of simple face recognition has proved to be quite complex.

In this chapter, we will build a security monitor service that determines whether movement has occurred. This is accomplished by comparing the frame images captured from a Web camera. If there is a difference between the images, then the service will send an e-mail notification. This is one of the simplest vision tasks to accomplish, but you might need to do something more complicated. If this is the case, you might want to consider integrating robotic vision software with your service.

RoboRealm (http://www.roborealm.com) provides a free-to-download robotic vision software application that you can use to perform complex image analysis. The RoboRealm image tool (see Figure 8-2) can be used to perform analysis functions such as locating the center of gravity or providing color and geometric statistics. Various filters can be applied to an image that perform such functions as removing the background or finding the max, min, mean, median, and midpoints of an image. For example, you can use the minimum filter to enhance dark values in an image. The list of functions goes on and on, and you can use RoboRealm to accomplish tasks such as trail following, object location, or digital gauge reading.

Figure 8-2. RoboRealm is a free-to-download robotic vision software tool that can be used to perform complex image analysis.

RoboRealm provides an interface service for integrating with MSRS. This allows you to use RoboRealm to process the image and then have your MSRS service instruct the robot to perform an applicable action. The MSRS interface can be downloaded from the RoboRealm Web site: http://roborealm.com/help/MSRS.php.

Another third-party tool that you can use to provide vision tracking services to your MSRS application is the VOLTS-IQ SDK by BrainTech (see http://www.braintech.com). VOLTS-IQ interfaces with the WebCam service offered by MSRS to provide real-time target tracking. You can download the latest version from the VOLTS-IQ Web site (http://www.volts-iq.com), and this includes sample code to get started. The software is free for noncommercial use.