Diego – the humanoid biped

Since the new processing unit for my robot, the Roboard RB-100, has USB ports, I can start using standard PC devices to fulfill different robot functions. This is so much easier than writing the device driver code myself. In this light I got hold of a very interesting off-the-shelf PC stereoscopic camera system: the Minoru 3D. I must thank the company, Promotion and Display Technologies, for taking this brave step and marketing such a device. This is how it comes when you buy it:

Minoru 3D consists of two web cameras in one sleek housing. For my purposes, I needed only the electronics, that would allow me to connect two webcams to a single USB port. This is why I stripped down the housing and came up with this:

Finally, here is how it looks like when the camera system is installed on the robot’s head on a pair of pan and tilt servo motors:

I found the Minoru 3D to be a great robotics component. It works very well under Windows and delivers good image quality. Very conveniently, it also contains a very well amplified microphone, which can be very useful in speech recognition applications. As a hint for anyone who might want to use this device in a similar fashion: when trying to take the plastic housing apart, there is no need for breaking it. The whole thing is held together with a concealed screw on the back of the neck of the Minoru housing. In future posts I will talk more about how I used this newly acquired vision system to add to my robot’s sensing capabilities.