Autonomous mobile robotic system with onboard vision using configurable logic

Robotic systems with real-time onboard vision processing capabilities are normally bulky or expensive. To process vision locally in real-time requires hardware resources capable of fast and efficient vision processing. Vision processing utilizes a lot of computational power. So onboard vision processing can present a challenge to a designer of robotic systems. In this paper we describe our design using a configurable computing environment for high-speed onboard vision processing to create a truly autonomous small scale robotics system. Using only onboard processing, the robotic system is able to navigate in an enclosed environment with vision cues. The target application in this case was robot soccer, but the concept of using configurable logic in vision systems can be extended to other applications. The functioning of the system was verified in a robot soccer competition which was held in the department. In the competition the robots successfully scored multiple goals using the vision system described in the paper. Video of the competition will be available for the conference presentation.