Design of Active Visual Marker for High Speed Object Tracking by Frame Subsampling

The trajectory of a moving object may be extracted from video using image processing algorithms. However, the quality of the extracted information largely depends on the frame rate and exposure time of the camera, thus it is difficult to capture fast movement using slower and less expensive cameras. To this end, we propose to use an active modulated light source for object tracking, interacting with exposure times and subsampling existing frames. A prototype of a multi-functional active visual marker is presented in this paper. The system is based on the ESP-WROOM-32 microcontroller, which is configured to use various communication protocols, namely WiFi 802.11, RF 2.4 GHz GFSK and RS485. The microcontroller controls the RGB LED, which is used as light source. In addition, the system can be synchronized with the external real-time clock. The experimental results have illustrated the advantages and disadvantages of the designed active markers and pointed out the directions for future work and development.