Joe Hewitt

For my university Final Year Project I'm developing a system in Max4Live that tracks different coloured balloons around a room, and plays different sounds for each one.

Im using a webcam and jit.findbounds to track the colour around a matrix, and output the X,Y coordinates. That works fine.

However i now want to bring more controllability into it. For this i want to measure how close (or far away) the tracked balloon is to the camera.

Long story short, I was wondering if anyone could tell me the best way measure an objects proximity to a webcams view, and how to then output data values for it.

P.S. I can post a patch if people would like, but I'm afraid I'm not exactly the neatest of patchers. You have been warned!

For my university Final Year Project I'm developing a system in Max4Live that tracks different coloured balloons around a room, and plays different sounds for each one.
Im using a webcam and jit.findbounds to track the colour around a matrix, and output the X,Y coordinates. That works fine.
However i now want to bring more controllability into it. For this i want to measure how close (or far away) the tracked balloon is to the camera.

Long story short, I was wondering if anyone could tell me the best way measure an objects proximity to a webcams view, and how to then output data values for it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. I can post a patch if people would like, but I'm afraid I'm not exactly the neatest of patchers. You have been warned!


webcam-tracking-proximity-to-camera

I recommend using a depth sensor like the Kinect. My externals dp.kinect and dp.kinect2 could both be used for this. The Kinect v2 and dp,kinect2 are probably the better choice. 

With them, you can use the RGB image and the depth image. Using the same patch you have today, you can find the color blobs. And then you can use dp.kinect2 to relate that to the depth pixels that align to those same color pixels. Then, you can get the real world XYZ values of those depth pixels. That allows you to get the XYZ position of your balloons.

I recommend using a depth sensor like the Kinect. My externals dp.kinect and dp.kinect2 could both be used for this. The Kinect v2 and dp,kinect2 are probably the better choice. http://hidale.com/shop/dp-kinect2/

With them, you can use the RGB image and the depth image. Using the same patch you have today, you can find the color blobs. And then you can use dp.kinect2 to relate that to the depth pixels that align to those same color pixels. Then, you can get the real world XYZ values of those depth pixels. That allows you to get the XYZ position of your balloons.


Webcam Tracking: Proximity to Camera.