A locking and tracking system for laser pointed moving objects

In this study, a locking and tracking system for laser pointed moving objects has been developed. The system investigated as two parts; the computer performs all the image processing techniques and the target tracking unit performs moving the camera on the x – y axis to keep the object at the center of each frame. The computer performs detection of the laser beam, segmentation of the object to be tracked and the real time tracking of the object. Detection of the laser beam is done by using the color properties of red laser and the high level intensity of laser beam on the image. After the detection of laser beam on the image, the last location of laser beam is used to segment the object from the image. The segmentation is done by using region based segmentation on the last location of laser beam. A small square placed at the center of the object is exaggerated until it passes over the object region to achieve the biggest square bounds the inner region of the object. This square then, used to get the H, S, V values and the histogram. Object tracking is done by using H, S, V values and the histogram with CAMSHIFT algorithm. The target tracking unit uses 2 servo motors to keep the system moving, based on the information of object location comes from the computer. USB interface is used to establish the communication between the computer and the target tracking unit. The developed system has been tested for 9 different conditions. The system worked with an average performance of 18.9 frames per second and a success rate of 95.6 %.