Master Thesis

Around 2006 I was attending a table tennis class at the university. Once, when I was going back home through snowy pavements, I was thinking about a system that would be able to employ stereo vision cameras and ABB's IRB-1400, an industrial robot, to play table tennis with the robot. Sometime after that I had a lab class on Microprocessor Systems with Marek Wnuk. I was usually finishing my tasks earlier, and when his attention was not absorbed by the other students, we were discussing a wide range of topics.

I told him about this table tennis robot idea (the IRB-1400 robot is in his lab) and I think he seemed interested. He said that the problem should be simplified; the system can use only one camera and resemble the very first computer game - “The Pong”. That was all, lab was over and I completely forgot this idea later on, I had a lot more different things to do. I didn't know also that this idea is not new, that Russell Andersson did it over twenty years ago.

When, in 2007, I was at the point of choosing my master thesis topic I was sure that I should inquire Marek Wnuk, as he is a specialist in the field that I am enthusiastic about - the computer vision. I haven’t had any specific idea what can I do for my master, but he, surprisingly for me, had chosen this pong robot idea as the thesis topic. I accepted this without further hesitation and I wasn't aware if it will be possible, how much time it will take and how grueling will it be.

Now I think that this is the most important project I ever did, the one I like especially because it involves enormous variety of fields (mechanics, electronics, embedded, computer vision etc.).

For detailed description see a short paper (in English) I wrote some time ago, or see my master thesis in original (in Polish, hosted at my supervisor's website).