Automatic motion analysis of colliding spheres

Motion analysis is useful to compute linear and angular velocities and acceleration of an object from a sequence of images. This thesis is part of an investigation to compute the translation and rotation velocities needed to determine the collision parameters of two colliding spheres. This involves the tracking of the spheres and feature points on the spheres over a time interval. An experimental setup releases two spheres such that they collide and a high speed imaging system, i.e., Kodak Ektapro 1000 is utilised to record the motion of the spheres. The imaging system is capable of recording at a speed of 1000 frames/sec with an image resolution of 239 x 192 for each frame. Selected images are analyzed in a PC 486 using programs developed with the Visilog software from Noesis 1. Edge data from the images allow the feature points and the locations of the spheres to be detected and their locations recorded. Centers of the circles are computed using the Hough transform technique. Correspondence of the feature points from frame to frame is achieved using the proximal uniformity constraint. Suggestions for future work are given