Very High Speed, Close Field, Object Positioning Using Tri-linear CCDs

To be able to effectively intercept and control a soccer ball travelling at high speed, it is useful to be able to accurately track the position of the ball as it approaches the robot. In this paper we present a method that can calculate the position in two dimensions at thousands of frames per second using a pair of inexpensive tri-linear CCDs. Each CCD gathers RGB information, which is then colour segmented. This data is then fused to calculate the location of the object in 2D. Further, the amount of processing required to detect these objects is low, and can be accomplished using inexpensive electronic components.