Image Processing

The first step of the cam design process required importing and processing an image of the Longhorn logo to obtain the desired pen output curve in a usable form. A suitable image was found on the internet and imported into MATLAB. This image then had to be processed in order to isolate the pixel indices corresponding only to the outline of the logo. These indices then had to be reordered such that the matrix of points provided a continuous curve that the pen could follow.

Even though the source image was black and white, it was still in the RGB space and had to be converted to gray scale. Then the edges of the images were consolidated by maximizing the contrast to obtain a truly binary image. Then the outline could be traced using the code found in our MATLAB section.