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File:Hornetseyerf.png Hornetseye on RubyForge
Seminar presentation "Machine vision and device integration with the Ruby Programming Language"
File:Rubywebcam.jpg Screenshot of Linux webcam application written in Ruby
File:Apollo left.jpg Left part of image	File:Apollo right.jpg Right part of image
File:Apollo result.jpg Stitched image

Introduction

HornetsEye is a Ruby-extension for developing video processing and real-time computer vision software under GNU/Linux offering interfaces to do image- and video-I/O with RMagick, Xine, firewire digital camera, and video for Linux. A new class of unprecedented solutions and a new way of working becomes conceivable when applying a dynamically typed, object-oriented language like Ruby to computer vision.

After installation you can use HornetsEye without having to compile or link anything! You can even develop computer vision algorithms on the command-line using Interactive Ruby (irb). HornetsEye offers image file-I/O, video input, access to webcams and framegrabbers, access to firewire digital cameras, edge detection, corner detection, user-defined filters. It thightly integrates with existing Ruby extensions.

HornetsEye is maybe the first free software project providing a solid platform for implementing real-time computer vision software in a scripting language. The platform potentially could be used in robotic applications, industrial automation as well as in microscopy and the life sciences.

The logo was created using GIMP and it shows a honeycomb structure as you would find on an insect's compound eye. A hornet is capable of navigating and detecting objects with the limited resolution of its compound eyes.

Webcam

The Linux webcam application uses HornetsEye, RMagick, and qt4-ruby (there also is a Windows webcam already).

See Hornetseye homepage for more examples.

Phase Correlation

The phase correlation example is an implementation of the phase correlation for aligning images. The code depends on HornetsEye, RMagick and NArray-fftw3.

Downloads

Before downloading you may want to check the installation instructions for information on what other software you need to install and run Hornetseye. See download instructions on how to obtain Hornetseye.

Software Engineering

HornetsEye brings the functionality of existing powerful free software packages into Ruby. HornetsEye also tries to make existing Ruby extension operate with each other to enable the development of novel solutions:

Qt4-QtRuby, Korundum: QtRuby and Korundum can be used to develop graphical user interfaces and desktop applications.
Xine: Using Xine one can read virtually any video file and it is even possible to read streaming videos.
MPlayer: MPlayer is a player which can be used to read video files under GNU/Linux as well as Microsoft Windows.
NArray: Masahiro Tanaka's NArray is an implementation of n-dimensional arrays for Ruby.
FFTW. The fftw-library can is maybe the fastest library for performing discrete Fourier transforms. It can be invoked by using Masahiro Tanaka's fftw3 extension.
RMagick: The RMagick Ruby-extension allows to use the powerful Magick++ library in Ruby for loading and saving images.
libdc1394: Using libdc1394 one can make use of a large choice of firewire digital cameras.
OpenEXR: The OpenEXR library is used for saving and loading high dynamic range images.
Boost: The Boost Library offers smart pointers to do exception safe programming, multi-dimensional arrays, template meta-programming, abstract data types for linear algebra and many other programming concepts. The Boost library is going to be part of a future C++ standard.
STL: The software makes use of the Standard Template Library
Ruby programming language
gnu-arch: gnu-arch is being used for version control.
Gcc: gcc is the C++ compiler of the GNU project.
autoconf, automake and make: make, autoconf and automake are used to configure and perform the build of the software on various distributions of the Linux operating system.
Natural Docs: Natural Docs is used to create the HTML documentation.