In these two weeks I successfully got the irobot to recognize the tag & move forward toward it and stop & to also turn and face it if it is not directly in its view, basically getting the irbot to follow the tag. I also got the irobot to tackle the tag when close enough. This was done using the nolan.py program in the Brown ROS package and making some slight changes to it.

Problems experienced with accomplishing this were:

1. The webcam on the mini notebook that I used had a bad resolution correction system, so I had to hard code a desired resolution that would work better with the ar_recog.

export GSCAM_CONFIG="v4l2src device=/dev/video0 ! video/x-raw-rgb,width=320,height=240 ! ffmpegcolorspace ! identity name=ros ! fakesink"

2. The main goal initially was to have the tag attached to the football and have the irobot use the tag to seek out & tackle the/kick the ball but I found difficulty in devising a means of doing this without the tag toppling over and the webcam losing sight of the tag. So instead simply attached the tag to a box to display the irobot working with the tag as though the box was a ball. the box substitute being a little better in this case seeing it would never topple over.

Below are videos I recorded showing the irobot performing a find & tackle and video showing that the irobot is programmed to follow the tag if it were to be moving.