Omnivision Extension for e-puck 2

A Raspberry Pi compatible extension for e-puck 2

The small e-puck 2 mobile robot is born of a university project designed to open up new possibilities in the world of research and education through use of robotics. It is a fully customisable and 100% open source and open hardware platform, which means you can design your own parts, programs, applications, etc.

To make e-puck even more interesting, a lab at the University of York has developed an extension that connects the robot to the computing power of the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The pi-puck extension can therefore increase its host’s computing speed, autonomy and memory capacity. Connecting peripherals is also much simpler thanks to the I/O ports on the small raspberry’s microcontroller. For example a camera, like the Omnivision module, to give your e-puck 2 new visual skills.

Image capture and blob tracking

The various features offered with the addition of this camera include:

• Image capture with a single press of the enter key, with the command raspistill -t 0 -k -o image.jpg
• Tracking of “blobs” (imprecise shapes of colour) thanks to a 360° rotation capability, allowing the camera to follow the object in question as soon as it spots it
• Colour and light detection