GigE camera provides vision for self-steering car competition winner

A team from the University of Ulm utilized a board-levelGigE camera in its Spatz 5 vehicle, which took home the top prize from the University of Brunswick – Institute of Technology’s annual Carolo Cup miniature autonomous vehicle competition.

Spatz 5 was one of student-designedautonomous vehicles that competed in the annual Carolo Cup race and competition. Vehicles are judged for a number of categories, including the ability to pass, stay in the lane, mind stop lines, and park correctly in a 70 cm parking space. To provide its "eyes," the University of Ulm students installed a Baumer MXG02 board level camera in the Spatz 5 to detect the course of the road and road markings.

BaumerMXG02 cameras feature 1/4" progressive scan Sony ICX618 CCD image sensors with 5.6 µm x 5.6 µm pixel size. The cameras also feature a GigE interface, 120 MB internal buffer, and free running and trigger synchronization. The 656 x 490 pixel cameras achieve a frame rate of 160 fps at full resolution, which Martin Bach, the team member in charge of imaging and a Computer and Communication Systems Engineer student, said helped the vehicle keep its course.

"The [Baumer] camera is not only ideally dimensioned for installation on our model car but also provides enough images with a maximum frame rate of 160 frames/second to keep our vehicle in the lane even when it is traveling fast around the course," he said. "The installed Gigabit Ethernet interface and API made it fast and easy to integrate the sensor in our existing system."

View more information on theSpatz 5 vehicle.

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