hi could anybody advise me as to how i would detect and recognize a golf ball, i am doing an autonomous golf ball collecting project, thanks

I always recognise my golf balls as being the wet or sandy ones within a 50ft range of where I was standing when they went missing.

ah come on kiwi

Don't get on Kiwi, this question gives rise to lots of fun answers. I'm sure we'll see more.

In seriousness, what is the venue in which the golf balls will be sought? Grassy field? Concrete floor? Forest? Under water? Under dirty water? Buried in sand? Under the sofa? Flying through the air? On a production line?

Let us know some more about the conditions. Perhaps some good ideas will come back.

Good on ya,

Goober Dave

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The obvious choice seems to be some kind of RFID tag. The technology has become relatively cheap in recent years. For a golfball application, given the high accelerations which it is subjected to, you might be into military-grade hardware which puts the price up an order of magnitude. Plenty stuff on Google to get started with.

The RFID tag should obviously also incorporate an embedded differential GPS to provide cm accurate location.

Is this for school? Picking up golf balls (for example at a driving range) is a solved problem.

Vision system? White contrasts nicely on green grass.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

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Recognize it in what context? On the grass? Amongst a basket of eggs or in a bucket of coal? One golf ball vs another golf ball? A golf ball left behind on the surface of the moon? Give us a little more to work with here.

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Crack it open. If there's a small alligator inside, it wasn't a golf ball.

Is this for school?

TTFN
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Can you sort for sphericity and use a 'go' and 'no go' hole in a small conveyor system?

Dik

"White contrasts nicely on green grass"

Only when Tiger doesn't hit them into the weeds...

RFID is the more ideal approach, even though it makes them more expensive.

TTFN
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Use a radioactive pink paint and track on that. Just don't get too close to them

RFID .NE. RF localization

...as far as I know. Otherwise someone would have made this work for all those many indoor short range localization project questions that infest these forums.

Obviously, in the extreme case, one could reduce the sensitivity of the RFID system to 1cm, and then if you get a ping then, "Hey! found one!"

Well, RFID is certainly a good solution if properly engineered...

However, if you want to locate unmodified golf balls made by the big manufacturers, you are back to a video or perhaps ultrasonic solution of some sort. Challenging!

Good on ya,

Goober Dave

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"RFID" "RFID" "RFID" ...sigh...

Passive RFID tags extract power from the interrogating signal. Therefore their range is relatively limited. So, upon detection, they're right there, within a few feet of the interrogator. I doubt anyone would bother trying to extract cm-accurate location from a passive RFID tag. It's theoretically possible, but impractical.

Active (battery powered) RFID tags (being a transceiver) could be location tracked over arbitrary distances using the obvious time-of-flight and phase tracking techniques. This sort of semi-obvious technology does not yet appear to have been commercialized. Many academic articles, very few actual systems.

In any case, it's a solved problem in the most-likely application:

VE1,

Embed a detection grid within the ground. Nothing in the rules seems to preclude this.

I do not think color would be a good option, as golf balls come in many colors. I have played rounds with people that insist on not using white balls so they can visually tell them apart without having to deal with who shot which brand and number on the ball. I have even seen green balls used.

I've seen people spend a fair bit of time hunting for balls in the tall weeds, so something like this: http://www.iautomate.com/products/wavetrend-l-rx20... is probably a bit of a time saver.

Overall, it's unclear whether devoting this much horsepower to finding golf balls is economically practical

TTFN
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Still no response form the OP on what he means by "detection", so I suppose he either was scared off or solved his problem...

Re: ball color:
I played a few rounds with my virgin (at the time) girlfriend way back when, my balls were blue...

"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum."
— Kilgore Trout (via Kurt Vonnegut)
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T.M.I.

IRStuff,
That reader, although impressive, is still dependent upon the tags being battery powered. Their smallest tag, one that goes on a key fob, is still bigger than most golf balls.

Quote (Wavetrend)

The KeyFOB Active Tags are powered by an internal battery. The Tag will, for the duration of its life, transmit a Radio Frequency (RF) signal at a pre-set time-interval. The Tag life is estimated at 3-5 years at a transmission time interval of approximately 10-12.5 seconds, or four bursts when the integral button is pressed. The lifespan of the Tag ends when the battery life is exhausted. Battery status can be inferred by interrogating the internal Tag Age Counter Value. Powered by Wavetrend.

Even if you could rework it to fit inside of a golf ball, it sells for $40 so the hue and cry at every water hazard would be deafening.

"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum."
— Kilgore Trout (via Kurt Vonnegut)
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Oh crap, is cost a consideration? The OP didn't seem too bothered...

Let's review some other derived requirements for the concept of embedding RFID tags (or similar) into golf balls.

* Up to 50,000g (?) acceleration
* Up to 10,800 rpm backspin
* Compression intruding into internal volume



All do-able, but the concept is impractical for the reasons previously posted.