3D Vision System for ROV

Skills Showcased 

Innovation, mechanical design, electronics design, microcontrollers, programming, software, fabrication, leadership

Description

For my senior year project at NSCC I developed a 3D vision system for the school’s ROV team (which I was also the CEO of). I used an Oculus Rift development kit to track the pilot’s head movements (pitch and yaw) which was used to position a 2-axis gimbal that I made from bent sheet metal. The gimbal held 2 cameras spaced at eye width which were displayed on the Oculus Rift for the pilot (shown below). The left camera fed to the left eye and the right camera fed to the right eye, this would be interpreted by the pilot as a 3D video, giving us depth perception. The pilot could simply look to where he wanted to move the cameras.

We competed in the 2014 MATE International ROV competition, winning 10th out of 30 teams, #1 Canadian team, and we won a Design and Innovation award for the vision system I created.  

Technical Details

I used PIC microcontrollers with custom PWM motor drivers to control the pitch and yaw of the gimbal. Head tracking information from the Oculus Rift was sent via serial to the PICs. The code was written in C/C++ using Microsoft Visual Studio. The board for the pics was designed using Multisim and CNC’d on site using the school’s CNC machine.