Overview of the project

The aim of the project is to build a simple face tracker that can track face only along the horizontal axis of the camera. The face tracker hardware consists of a webcam, Dynamixel servo called AX-12, and a supporting bracket to mount the camera on the servo. The servo tracker will follow the face until it aligns to the center of the image from the webcam. Once it reaches the center, it will stop and wait for face movement. The face detection is done using an OpenCV and ROS interface, and the controlling of the servo is done using a Dynamixel motor driver in ROS.

We are going to create two ROS packages for this complete tracking system; one is for face detection and finding the centroid of the face, and the other is for sending commands to the servo to track the face using the centroid values.

Okay! Let's start discussing the hardware and software prerequisites of this project.