From: Bob Leif To: Marcus Brakewood et al. Cadet Westpoint I would suggest a low-powered Pentium type processor with the MMX instruction set. The image processing surround operations showed be operated in parallel. These primarily are unsigned 8 multiplies. Make sure you can test for overflow. Rank operators involve a sort of 8 or more pixel values. I do not know if any of the Ada compiler manufacturers have implemented MMX? However, as matter of honor and advertising, they should do everything to make sure that an Ada team has the very best chance to win. There is an Ada pattern recognition package, which I have. It was written in Ada 83 by Byron Harris of the Software Engineering Department of LORAL (Ford) Aeronutronic, Newport CA 92658. I believe that Loral is no longer in Newport. This program was supported by STARS. -------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL REPORT - CDRL A001C REUSABLE IMAGE PROCESSING PACKAGES CONTRACT NUMBER N00014-87-C-2432 APRIL 28, 1988 "8 LESSONS LEARNED: One of the major lessons learned in this project is that Ada is a very suitable language for image processing applications. Many of the functions produced had been programmed in other languages. It was not difficult to program them in Ada. Many of the algorithms are very computationally intense and this led to slow execution times on the VAX and the IBM AT. However, any high order language would have this problem." -------------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish a copy, I will supply what I have as is in ZIP format. If at all possible, your camera should be able to rapidly sample a small central field. This accelerates autofocusing. I highly recommend G. A. Baxes, "Digital Image Processing" Wiley 1994 ISBN 0-471-00949-0. Another good book is John C. Russ, "The Image Processing Handbook, 3rd ed. CRC Press, Inc. 1998, ISBN: 0849325323. Russ has two commercial software packages that run as plug-ins to Adobe PhotoShop. It might pay to analyze your images with a commercial package prior to creating your software. -----Original Message----- From: Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Carlisle, Martin, Dr, DFCS Sent: Wednesday, August 23, 2000 7:22 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Senior Capstone Questions One option you might explore is using a translator. I know there exists a translator from Ada to C (I think Tucker Taft would know about where you might be able to purchase this), and also JGNAT translates from Ada to Java byte code if you had a chip that could run that. Best of luck! --Dr. Martin Carlisle, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, USAFA -----Original Message----- From: Brakewood, Marcus x12479a2 [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2000 5:45 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Senior Capstone Questions Hello Team Members, I am a cadet at West Point leading the EE and CS cadets who are part of an interdisciplinary group from our school. This group is competing in the 9th Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition, http://www.secs.oakland.edu/SECS_prof_orgs/PROF_AUVSI/index.html. Unlike the other schools, who use C++, we are going to use Ada because of Ada's great support for real-time systems and also, it is our favorite language. I have a few questions for Team-Ada to help us get started. 1: We were looking into using the LART http://www.lart.tudelft.nl/ as our computer in our vehicle because of it's low power usage, low weight, and the coolness factor in putting it together. Will GNAT work on the LART, which utilizes Intel's Strongarm processor? 2: Is there a computer better suited for Ada that has a low power consumption, low weight, and would be fun to put together (Something Transmeta?)? 3: Have any of you worked on or know of Ada resources for an unmanned intelligent ground vehicle, frame recognition from a video camera, or laser modeling. Just looking for those hard to find Ada links or references on these topics. 4: Any other suggestions or help? Thank You, Cadet Marcus Brakewood