Q: Vectorization of Bitmap Data

Hello,

we want to do the following:
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We want to enable an industrial robot (similar to a human arm) to capture a simple drawing (e.g. a circle, house, rabbit) from a blackboard with a digital camera an then draw it on a paper with a pen. the aplications does not need any GUI or stuff.

my problem is:
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after acquiring the image as a bitmap, i have to convert it into some kind of coordinates or "vectorize" it so the robot can draw the picture. its just a greyscale bitmap. i think it might be similiar to converting images for enabling plotters etc. to draw them...

my questions are:
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1. do you have any hints on how to vectorize bitmaps? the vector data should be available in a simple format afterwards. it has to be further processed to make it suitable for the robots software.

2. do you know any c++-libraries that are able to do this?

3. do you have any ideas, hints, or else, which applications are similiar and where to find more information?

4. is there maybe any library dealing with plotters that might come handy?

my problem is NOT:
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-to acquire the bitmap itself.
-to control the robot (that is my co-programmers problem, haha :)
-processing time. it is just an example application, it is not necessary that the bitmap-vectorization is done very fast
-processing resources: the image will be captured and processed by an athlon XP 2000+, not some microcontroller.

my system is:
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athlon XP 2000+, win XP pro, MS visual c++ 6.0

thanks a lot for reading an maybe helping!

greetings from europe,

oliver bartz aka tomcat0815