Detection of large bodies of water for heterogeneous swarm applications

Multiple robot systems are becoming popular, as introducing more robots into a system generally means that the system is able to finish a task quickly, as well as making the system more robust. Generally, these systems are homogenous in nature as they are easier to build, test and conceptualise. More applications of these types of systems in a heterogeneous sense is becoming a must, as these robots are acting in more than one medium such as on land and underwater. In this paper a subsystem of a heterogeneous swarm is investigated where a land based robot is to drive up to the edge of a pool and stop autonomously, allowing for the transfer of an object from an underwater robot. To detect the edge of a pool an Xbox Kinect sensor is used as it was found that by using the IR feed of the camera the problem becomes significantly simpler.