Endeavour2005

PCI2 – Image Processing System for Mobile Agents

Students: Timothy Bates, Simon Holt

Supervisors: Dr Michael Cantoni, Dr Peter Dower

The PCI projects arise from a larger effort to develop a flexible platform for the implementation and evaluation of systems consisting of networked, mobile agents that are capable of sensing and interacting with their environment. Application areas include automated warehousing, surveillance, environmental monitoring and robot sports, for example. Each group is developing a module with a different function (optical sensors, acoustic sensors, power supply and distribution, wireless communication etc) that can be added to a mobile agent. These will communicate using the PCI (peripheral component interconnect) standard found in many personal computers.

How the PCI projects will improve everyday life
When completed the PCI project will remove the need for workers to operate repeatedly in hazardous situations and increase the efficiency of operations in many industrial areas.
The agents will be able to:
• Operate in hazardous situations that workers cannot.
• Increase the efficiency of operations
• Reduce human, “operator error”, in operations
• Provide increased visibility and control of operations.

What the future holds for this type of technology
This technology will fill a void in the automation of many systems. Complex and precision tasks currently carried out by workers may be completed by devices using this system of sensing.

PCI2 — Optical Sensors
Our aim is to develop a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) card to host an array of optical sensors and associated interface, control and data- processing logic. The card should be capable of being used as the basis for obstacle recognition, tracking, avoidance and localisation algorithms.

The Optical Sensing Module uses optical sensors to “see” the surrounding environment. The sensors will receive information from the environment. This information will then be digitized and passed to a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) hosting an imbedded microprocessor. The microprocessor will run algorithms to allow the agent to recognize, track and avoid surrounding objects and help determine its own location. The key information from these algorithms will be transmitted to other modules via the PCI bus.

Timothy Bates, Dr Michael Cantoni, Dr Peter Dower, Simon Holt