Obstacle Avoidance and Color Detection using Image Segmentation

Rovio, produced by WowWee, is a small robot equipped with a webcam, IR sensor, base station localization signal, and a unique wheel setup allowing it to move sideways and diagonally as well as forward and backward. The goal of this project is to program Rovio to successfully avoid any obstacles while navigating an indoor environment and simultaneously searching for a color-coded target object. For this project, we used only Rovio’s webcam. We used some median filters to smooth the image and then applied image segmentation on the smoothed image; we then decided which of the segments was the floor and used the position of other segments to see where the obstacles were and avoid them. We used a simple color filter to find the target object and programmed Rovio to move sideways to avoid obstacles while keeping the target in view. We tested our code in a variety of different situations and the success rate was very high: in almost all trials, Rovio was able to successfully avoid obstacles and find the target.