Robotics Object Recognition

I am new to an Electronics. I am basically a software developer.
I am planning to develop one robotic who will see the object in front of it and scan it and store it as image/map/or in pixel.

May i know how to go for it?
My basic questions are:
1. How it will look the object and scan an image and store?
2. Any Laser technolgy is required?
3. How to build an electronic circuit?
4. Overall flow.
5. In which language do i need to develop software program if any action is required?

Let't try these one at a time.

1. Use a Charged Coupled Device (CCD) Camera
2. I don't think so, but I could be wrong
3. Design the circuit, fabricate the board, assemble the components
4. I'm not sure what you mean here
5. Any procedural language will do

There is a whole industry called machine vision that creates exactly these kind of devices and systems. Many companies have gone belly up trying to make and sell useful products.

Laser Imagers- start out much more expensive, but data is more reliable and easier to work with (it's just a bunch of distance reading in polar coordinates. The data gives direct information that can be used. But you can't do as many things with the data as imaging.

Imaging- Cameras can be much much cheaper than lasers. Processing the data is much much more intensive hardware and software wise. Data interpretations are less reliable though you can do more with the data. If you try to get distance information with imaging, you probably need stereo, or even triple camera systems and those approach or exceed the cost of lasers.

If this is just hobby, my advice, transmit data to a PC and get the PC to do all the image processing (though I hate doing that just as much as the next person who likes self-contained robots). If you are a software engineer, I'd recommend transmitting all processing to a PC. I believe MATLAB is capable of doing such processing and if you can get it to work, it may help you save a lot of time. Going with lasers is just too expensive for a past time.

The cheapest laser I have found is the $2000 at Acroname (can also be found in a few other places). It only works to 4 meters though and is not an imager, just a line scanner. The next cheapeset lasers cost >$10,000 or so, but do imaging and work for km.

Maybe you can learn something about imaging and porting the processing to a PC by browsing around:
http://www.drrobot.com/

Maybe this link can help you.

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You should probably learn all about image processing and image and pattern recognition, first. The algorithms you decide to use will probably determine, at least in part, the specifications of the image-gathering and processing hardware.

Automatic image recognition can be quite complex. Search the IEEE publications.

- Tom Gootee

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If you are an experimenting software developer, try the CMUCam 3 or the BOE Bot camera. Both of which are open source so you can write your own code for it without worrying about the hardware. ONe is a lot cheaper than the other though, though I don't know how much less capable. THey both seem quite good.