[Studies in Computational Intelligence 481] Artur Babiarz, Robert Bieda, Karol Jędrasiak, Aleksander Nawrat (auth.), Aleksander Nawrat, Zygmunt Kuś (eds.) - Vision Based Systemsfor UAV Applications (2013, Sprin

Automatic Targeting Sentry Turret for Distributed Systems 53
The most important information from vision system is the position of object
and real time processing [12]. Objects are tracked with use of history of motion
and optical flow algorithm. It is assumed that the scene is static, and the camera is
not moving. If a new moving object appears it is separated from the background
and its center of mass is calculated. As long as an object is moving its position is
tracked and its coordinates are sent as control of gun positioning variables.
Each turret is mounted in one place and as a process of setting up the equipment
it is possible to provide the GPS coordinates so the turret can work in slave
mode. In this case turret is receiving orders about objects and targets position that
are detected from other systems. Aiming targets is done by calculating the position
of object due to turret position and setting the proper orientation.
It is also possible that the user is manually operating the gun. It can work with
two ways. In fully manual mode user is controlling the gun actuators. In semiautomatic
mode user is working with vision system and can point objects on camera
output frames in order to move the gun to that position or to track objects.
The presented solution was made with use of easy methods and its purpose was
to point out all disadvantages that should be handled. The parameters that should
be considered are: wind speed, bullet speed while shooting moving targets, distance
from object that indicates bullet descending due to gravity. Each of those
variables cause the inaccuracy of the gun. For example it is possible that if the
object is moving fast, the gun would not shoot the object, but the place where the
object was small amount of time ago.
5 Future Work
The proposed architecture of distributed system for monitoring and control of
robotic application has proven its usefulness in sentry turret application. It is possible
to use such architecture for other devices, such as exoskeletons. It is important
to be able to remotely monitor the health of the exoskeleton application elements,
such as batteries, actuators and controllers, to ensure safety of the user. The experience
from sentry turret application showed that this is possible and doesn't even
need dedicated architecture written from the very bottom, but the usage of existing,
universal architectures is possible. Current work will be focused on the usage
of different devices, such as tablets or smartphones, to allow interconnection between
robotic applications and remote users.
6 Summary
Targeting system requires extensive testing, as far as dispersion, recoil and different
ranges are concerned. One of the biggest issues are shooting the moving targets,
because in this case a lot of arguments should be taken into account, some of
them are difficult to measure, some demand high measurement accuracy. However
it was shown and proven that the system can work with multi agent approach and