Tracking faces with Python
Detecting faces (or other objects) by features is a smart behavior. Once our robot is detecting faces, it will point the pan-and-tilt mechanism at the nearest (well, largest) face.
Using Haar cascades is a common technique, well documented in a paper by Paul Viola and Michael Jones (known as Viola Jones). In essence, it means using a cascade of feature matches to search for a matching object. We will give an overview of this technique, then put it into use on our robot to create a fun behavior. Using different cascade model files, we could pick out faces or other objects.
Finding objects in an image
We will be using an algorithm implemented in OpenCV as a single and useful function, which makes it very easy to use. It provides a simple way to detect objects. More advanced and complex methods involve machine learning, but many systems use Haar cascades, including camera apps on phones. Our code will convert the images into grayscale (black through...
