Estimating Distance
Case Study: Estimating Distance Using a Fixed Angle Camera Using Area to Estimate Distance Using a Fixed Angle Camera If your vision tracking camera is mounted on your robot in such a way that its angle between the ground plane and its line of sight does not change then you can use this technique to very accurately calculate the distance to a target. You can then use this distance value to either drive your robot forward and back to get into the perfect range or you can use it to adjust the power of a shooting mechanism. See the below diagram. In this situation all of the variables are known: the height of the target (h2) is known because it is a property of the field. The height of your camera above the floor (h1) is known and its mounting angle is known (a1). The limelight (or your vision system) can tell you the y angle to the target (a2). We can solve for d using the following equation: tan(a1+a2) = (h2-h1) / d d = (h2-h1) / tan(a1+a2) When...
