In the distant past, college kids played pinball—an arcade game requiring high-speed hand-eye coordination and deft control of the machine’s flippers. These skills need to be coupled with the ability to jar the machine with just enough force to guide the ball at crucial moments without causing the dreaded “tilt”.
Most students have now moved on to digital forms of amusement, from Doom to Grand Theft Auto. And yet a few enthusiasts continue to play more physical games such as foosball and air hockey, and in some novel ways.
Consider the team of engineering students at Ohio Northern University that has been developing a vision-guided robotic system for playing air hockey. Of less amusement and more industrial value, the system may also help in the development of dynamic bin-picking applications.
As described in a Snapshot article in this issue, the robot’s vision is provided by a FireWire camera from Point Grey Research. In operation, the system can defend the goal from a human opponent and soon will learn attacking moves. To show how the system has been developed, the student’s have developed a video that is available on Vision Systems Design’s Web site in our recently enhanced video library.
Ohio’s student development team chose a FireWire camera for its speed and reliability—qualities that the FireWire interface has been providing since it was first introduced more than 25 years ago. But as the students no doubt discovered, choosing among the many available FireWire cameras is not a simple task.
In his Product Focus article in this issue, editor Andy Wilson notes that more than 1100 FireWire cameras are on the market, manufactured by at least 80 vendors. Fortunately he provides some guidance on selecting among the cameras based on the demands of individual applications and sensor specifications.
For more FireWire developments, read our cover story describing a machine-vision system that uses six FireWire cameras to inspect automotive door handles as they move along an automated conveyor. As described by Earl Yardley of Industrial Vision Systems, the cameras perform a complex series of inspections ensuring that the correct parts are present, correctly placed, and match the shipping manifest.
While FireWire has a long history for a digital interface, it is no match for the history of pinball, which dates back to the French game of Bagatelle developed for the court of Louis XIV. The more modern form of the game can be traced to the late 19th Century, when it swept into American arcades. Indeed there are now digital versions of pinball—and foosball and air hockey. But to develop machine-vision systems requires more than a knowledge of digital developments. Leveraging age-old, hands-on mechanical skills, and knowledge of automation, mechanical engineering, and robotic systems will ensure that these systems operate well into the future.
W. Conard Holton
Editor in Chief
[email protected]