AUTOMATED TENNIS BALL

COLLECTOR ROBOT

: RAHUL N S SAJIN SAMJAN SARATHPRASAD K V SUDEESH K S

Group Members

Project Guide : -------------

FISAT: S8ECE-B 2011-2015

Contents

Introduction

Literature survey

Block Diagram

Overview

Hardware Components

Software components

Circuit Diagram

Working ( Flow chart )

Algorithm for MATLAB Programming

Matlab Output

Hardware System (output)

Application & Future score

Conclusion

Reference

2

Introduction

It is a wastage of energy to move around the tennis court

to collect balls during training sessions.

The currently available technology to launch balls will also

consume approx 35% of player‟s effective time.(ITF Survey)

The main Objective of this project is to design and develop an automated

robotic tennis ball collector, to be able to identify the standard tennis

balls in the court and collect it to the carriage along with it.

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LITERATURE SURVEY

Realized the relevance of need for a robotic system for collecting tennis

balls during practice sessions with mathematical evidence. [1]

And gave the idea about applying MATLAB as a tool for

accurate ball recognition; by image processing techniques.

Could familiarize a few existing systems like „Vacuum cleaner type collector‟,

‟Eagnas roller ball collector‟, ‟Bear claw collector‟, ‟Remote controlled collector‟.

All these system required partial or full manual control.

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The system consists of two sections

The Robotic Section

• Involves random movement through the court, automatically diverting from

large obstacles.(Using sonar sensor)

• Detection of balls/small obstacles (Using IR Sensor)and accessing its image

to the server PC (Processing unit) using Wi-Fi camera and zigbee module.

• Ball acquisition system with robotic arm which gets activated on receiving

“YES” command from image processing unit (server).

Image processing section

• The image received at server PC is processed using MATLAB,

If attributes like size, colour etc of image matches with that of standard

tennis ball, sends a “YES” command to the robot.

Overview

MICROCONTROLLER

( PIC 16x877 )

ULTRASONIC SENSOR

IR TXR

IR RXR

CAMERA

(wifi cam) MATLAB UNIT

(@ server pc )

ROBOTIC

ARM

MOTOR

WiFi Zigbee

Hardware requirements

Microcontroller ( PIC 16f877)

Advanced MC manufactured by MICROCHIP, with High

performance RISC CPU, suitable for machine control apps.

40 Pin package with 5 I/O Ports A,B,C,D,E

Operating speed: 20 MHz clock input

Timer0: (8-bit ) Timer1: (16-bit) Timer2: (8-bit ) timer/counter

Program Flash 8K : Data Memory 368 Bytes : Data EEPROM 256 Bytes

Low-power, high-speed Flash/EEPROM

15 Interrupts

Serial I/O module : USART

operating voltage : 2.0V to 5.5V [ Low-power consumption ]

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Ultrasound sensor

Active ultrasonic sensors generate high frequency sound waves and

evaluate the distance from obstacle based on the echo received.

Here it is used for the robot to identify any large obstacles (like wall)

and to redirect its motion path.

Connected serially to the USART module of PIC

IR Sensor

The IR Sensor is a general purpose proximity sensor. Usually its is

used for collision detection or obstacle detection

Here used to detect small objects including balls

When connection b/w IR txr and rxr is disturbed it produces a HIGH

o/p

Hardware requirements 8

Zigbee

Here it is used to send command from Matlab to the robot and vice versa.

ZigBee is a technological standard that allows to create personal area networks; especially for control and sensor networks

DC Motors and L293D

For motion of robot 2 dc motors are used

Controlled using motor driver IC L293D, which processes the

signals from PIC to drive the motor

Hardware requirements

Wi-Fi Camera

A digital camera that transmits images to a computer via Wi-Fi.

Using this images can be stored on a local computer , allowing for an

unlimited number of pictures to be taken and process them lively.

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Hardware requirements

CD 4052

CD4052 is a 4-channel analog multiplexer digitally controlled

analog switch.

It is having two binary control inputs, A and B, and an inhibit input.

The two binary input signals select one among 4 pairs of channels

to be turned on and connect the differential analog inputs to the

differential outputs.

Here it is used to switch access to the serial port between max sonar

and zigbee ( to Matlab)

Servo Motor as Robotic Arm

To tuck in the detected tennis ball into the carriage

By changing the servo duty the gate is opened and closed to acquire

the Ball.

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MAT LAB

(to process the image for ball recognition)

MATLAB (matrix laboratory) is a matrix -based powerful software package

for scientific and engineering computation and visualization

• Image Processing Toolbox

Provides a comprehensive set of functions, and apps for

image processing, analysis, segmentation, enhancement,

visualization, noise reduction etc.

• Image Acquisition Toolbox

Enables user to acquire images and video from cameras

directly into MATLAB workspace

Software requirements 11

Software requirements

mikroC

• mikroC is a full-featured ANSI C compiler

• Used to prepare source code in embeddedC, compile it and to produce

.hex file

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Circuit Diagram 13

Working

START Power ON

TIMER initialization. Setting servo duty

to open gate

PORTS initialization

Move Forward

Checks Max

sonar

STOP Motors

Take reverse Leftwards (Anticlockwise rotation

of right motor)

STOP Motor

If any large obstacle found

If No obstacle found

Move Forward

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Working

Checks IR

sensor

STOP Motors

If any object found

Switch from Sonar to Zigbee using

CD4052

Zigbee (Sends sym ‘D’ to MATLAB)

MATLAB captures image of object using wi-fi cam

Image is processed

Zigbee (Sends character to PIC)

Change servo duty & Tuck the ball in

Switch from Zigbee to sonar using

CD4052

Take reverse Rightwards (Anticlockwise rotation of

left motor)

STOP Motor

If no object found

(O) If TENNIS BALL (N) If not a TENNIS BALL

Move Forward

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Algorithm for MATLAB programming

Step 1: Start

Step 2: Set up the serial port

Step 3: Perform camera initialization settings using image acquisition tool box

Step 4: Wait for signal from zigbee and read the character if received

Step 4: If character „D‟ is received take snapshot of current frame using “getsnapshot()”

Step 5: Linear filtering. A predefined gausian filter is accessed using “fspecial()”

applied to the image using “imfilter()”

Step 6: Separate Red, Green, Blue layers

Step 7: Define Yellow color plane ( Color of tennis ball)

Step 8: Adjust the image for uniform intensity distribution using “imadjust()”

Step 9: Convert to binary for property estimation using “im2bw()”

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Algorithm for MATLAB programming

Step 10: Perform morphological closing and opening using “imclose” & “imopen”

Step 11: Fill black pixels with in the white region using “imfill()”

Step 12: Remove unwanted small white pixels in the image using “bwareaopen()”

Step 13: Detect circular object of specified brightness and radius using

“imfindcircles()”.

Step 14: Draw a circle around detected balls using “viscircles()”

Step 15: If detected, show a warning dialogue “Tennis ball detected”

& send a character „O‟

Else

Show “No Tennis ball detected”

& send a character „N‟

Step 16: Stop

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Input image Filtered Image

Extracted yellow color plane Uniformly distributed image

Binary Image

Matlab Output

Image after combined dilation and erosion

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Final Image

Matlab Output

Black pixels in the

white region are removed

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Warning Dialogues

Case1: Sends ‘O’ Case1: Sends ‘N’

20 Hardware System

Side View

21 Hardware System

Back View

Front View

The system has worked successfully and delivered the necessary output as expected

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To avoid stopping the tennis players for ball collection during their

practice time, permitting a higher use rate of the time. Or simply

we can say, avoids the extra requirement of a ball boy.

APPLICATION

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FUTURE SCOPE

There is still room for further improvements. Like the model may incorporate

some extra high-tech features such as Improved robotic arm with more

intelligence to pick balls .

Improved system to avoid collisions (By use of multiple max sonar).

The same system can be used for collecting cricket balls during practice in

nets or ground, with some necessary changes in image processing part.

CONCLUSION

Thus R.T.B.C can be regarded as an efficient system that can reduce the

time and effort required in collecting the tennis balls around the tennis

court, which enables players to concentrate more on the game.

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REFERENCE

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1] Neha Chawla, Wuqayan Alwuqayan, Ahmed Faizan, Sabri Tosunoglu

“Robotic Tennis Ball Collector”, 2012 Florida Conference on Recent Advances in Robotics

Boca Raton, Florida, May 10-11, 2012

[2] John Wang

“Ballbot: A Low-Cost Robot for Tennis Ball Retrieval”,

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2012-157

http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2012/EECS-2012-157.html June 2, 2012

[3] Ryan Collier, Mohammed Adham , Perry Haldenby, Kevin Smit

“Autonomous Tennis Ball Collector “

University of waterloo, December 4, 2009

[4] Naomi Henderson , Professor Rick Middleton

“Digital Image ProcessingIn Robot Vision”

The University of Newcastle, Australia.