FPGA based real-time color discrimination design for ubiquitous robots

Abstract

Detecting objects by their color is essential in robotic sensing. A simple way is probably to capture images with a digital camera and then using algorithms to determine colors of an input image. However, this approach is always affected by some issues such as light reflection and shadows on the object's surface. Although some sensory methodologies for color detection are available, they might not be a good choice in a ubiquitous robotic system, whereby real-time computation ability and low power consumption are of utmost importance. Too complicated image processing techniques will cause some practical problems when implemented in an embedded system. Here, a real-time algorithm is presented for color detection which can be used with the field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. By utilizing the proposed approach implemented in circuit designs, real-time color discrimination can be achieved with good performance as demonstrated in this paper.