Do you ever imagine of taking a family video without a camera man? Or, do you ever imagine being able to freely walk around a room or lazily relax on a sofa without adjusting your webcam while video conferencing over the internet with your friend?

Autonomous systems are increasingly becoming a hot topic in the fields of science and engineering. However, it is a wide field covering many areas including controlling moving, sensing, tracking, communicating etc.

The project will present a tracking system that uses visual feedback. The main aim is to design a camera capable of rotating and tracking a selected target. Despite its complexity, the whole system is very low cost and all the components are easily available. Simple hardware including a webcam and hobby servo motor are used as the basic components. The standard personnel computer is to be used as the main processing power that is responsible for image processing and decisively controlling the motor. Basically, the PC will retrieve the image from webcam to locate the new position and then adjust the angle of the camera if appropriate. For most part of algorithm, MATLAB will be used as development tools.

This technology may be used for a variety of purposes, ranging from consumer Internet conferences to security systems, robotic systems and medical image processing. Hence, this project can be commercialized to target different levels of users.

Dr Brian Krongold, Moa Chun Lee