Here's the situation: I'm working on a control system, and I would like to control a human to move a tool around in a desired arbitrary shape. This shape will be etched into some kind of material, where it can be evaluated.
Now, I would like the shape to be represented by a black and white image, which has no grey values in between black and white. I don't know if I need to convert this collection of black pixels into a line, or a function, which the control program can then use to determine the vector in which it should propel the human. The problem, though, is what image libraries are out there that can do this for me? I'm sure there are already tons of image libraries out there that can probably do something like report which pixel coordinates are black, or something. Problem is, I have no idea where to start.
EDIT: Basically, I want my control program to receive a shape from a program that understands the difference between a black and white pixel, and can generate a shape out of an image, represented via a path, or just a collection of points, which the program could probably follow.