Robotic arm control in space with color recognition using a Raspberry PI

Abstract

In this paper a robotic arm control, with color recognition, implemented on a Raspberry PI, will be presented. The Raspberry PI is a small super computer which is suitable for almost any embedded project. To the Raspberry PI is connected a Logitech C270 web camera or a TP-LINK TL-SC3230 IP camera and a USB to serial dongle which does the communication task. The camera pair films the robotic arm and the USB to serial dongle controls the robotic arm. The color recognition is done with OpenCV installed on the Raspberry PI. The robotic arm has glued colored bottle stoppers on the joints which are recognized with color filtering. These joints are united with lines and other lines are drawn to be guide lines to some mathematical computations. Based on these lines a skeleton of the robotic arm is created, which is an info for the Raspberry PI about the position in space of the robotic arm. With further computations the robotic arm can be moved in the desired position.