Posts Tagged ‘goal’

January Happenings

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, February 1st, 2010

What has happened in January? Tons of stuff!

irobot-create

For Matlab this semester, it’s an independent project. I’m working with a friend to implement an adaptive online SLAM algorithm for an iRobot with a CMU cam and ultrasonic sensor. We want it to be able to reach a goal location even if objects are placed in front of it. I’ll be blogging more about this later, though. ;)

Screen shot 2010-02-01 at 8.43.36 AM

The Social Robotics software that I worked on over the summer is now released under the GPLv3 license. I encourage everyone to check out the Social Robotics page if you want to learn more about the project! I am still in the process of creating the documentation and commenting for the code. As soon as it is complete, I will make a blog post. =)

Luckily for me, I took time to make detailed daily and weekly summaries. This will help a lot, plus it’s always neat to look back and see what the difficult parts were.

Did you hear/watch this year’s FIRST game animation? The game is about soccer! Team 229 has many useful links on their webpage that can fill you in.

This year I’m helping out with the website, maybe I will get to help out with some AI coding for the autonomous mode later on. It all depends on what the high school students think up!

I ended up adding a class two hours before the first lecture- Applied Statistics I. I don’t enjoy statistics very much since I have horrible memories of it from Math 536. But, once I gained access to view the class on the gradebook software, I immediately noticed two words:

SecondLife ……………… Project

Is this for real!?!?! It turned out that it is, and it is awesome! A friend and I are working on trying to figure out if there is a correlation between the virtual economy and the real economy. We’re going to focus mainly on North & South America, Europe and Australia.

Here’s a screenshot of my professor in SecondLife!

secondlife-statistics

I’m taking a class on Computer Graphics. It’s really neat– I’m learning OpenGL!

OpenGL is something that I’ve wanted to learn for a while now. It’s actually quite simple when you’re given a template to work with!

Screen shot 2010-02-01 at 8.35.03 AM

Above is the first homework assignment! We were given a lot of time with it, which allowed me to play around with the code. I have to make the colours more plain before I hand it in, though. :(

I have no idea what I want to make with OpenGL at the moment. Maybe a moving robot? I definitely want to make some sort of game, though. (That way I can sell it on the iPhone App Store!)

That’s all for now. I’ll be blogging more about the Matlab project, since I think it’s going to be a hit!

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Posted in: Animation, Art, Programming, Projects, Robot, School.

Friday Night Robotics – Portable… Fish.. Tank… Robot… ???

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, November 15th, 2009

This FNR I continued work on the blinky blink NXT LED fish! I added wheels to it, sensors, and the NXT brick. Basically, this now makes it a ‘portable fish tank robot’!

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The idea stemmed from the want to make a robot that can drive around on a table but not fall off. In particular, the table would be the table for the Autonomous Robotics Club at the admissions open house activity fair ^_^

Ultrasonic sensors are usually the best for this, since it depends on distance. Though, one could easily make a mechanism to trigger a touch sensor… or one could use a light sensor, but there is more possibility for error with a light sensor.

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The design right now has the ultrasonic sensor sticking out more that that, since it wasn’t far enough out… this means that sometimes the NXT couldn’t tell the motors to stop in time, and it would fall off the table.

The motors are geared to be fast, since I want it to be fast like a fish!

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The screen displays the ‘water level’ for the LED fish. In the picture, it used a method of drawing the level line by line, but I later refined it so that it uses a rectangle, and increments 3 pixels more so that it’s noticable when one presses the button.

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The robot can zip around pretty quickly, which produces some interesting artsy stuff:

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The LED fish are on the back of the robot, and the speed of their blinks is determined by how much ‘food’ they have. The more food, the more fast it is, the less food, the slower it is. When you press the button to feed the fish, it makes a bloop sound :P

Portable Fish Tank Robot

The LED fish is what makes this project. No one can resist the power of super-cute LED fish. They’re just so happy! :)

Here’s a video of the robot in action. It’s running the old program, but it’s all pretty much the same thing :)

The code for this is pretty cool. The NXT can handle up to 10 different simultaneous tasks! I use this to check the sensors for food and water, drive the robot, and blink the LED fish at the same time. Now, I’m still experimenting with the code, which is why there are bugs, random functions, and no comments in it.

  1. #pragma config(Sensor, S1,     HTPB,                sensorI2CCustom9V)
  2. #pragma config(Sensor, S2,     sonicSensor,         sensorSONAR)
  3. #pragma config(Sensor, S3,     touchSensor1,         sensorTouch)
  4. #pragma config(Sensor, S4,     touchSensor2,         sensorTouch)
  5. //*!!Code automatically generated by ‘ROBOTC’ configuration wizard               !!*//
  6.  
  7. /*
  8.   Crazy LEDs!
  9.   Erin K
  10.   Oct. 9th, 2009
  11. */
  12.  
  13. #include "drivers/common.h"
  14. #include "drivers/HTPB-driver.h"
  15.  
  16. byte theLEDs[] = { 0×01, 0×02, 0×04, 0×08, 0×10, 0×20 };
  17. int theTime = 50;
  18. int theWaterLevel = 32;
  19. int foodButton = 0;
  20. int waterButton = 0;
  21. int averageTouch1Level = 0;
  22. int averageTouch2Level = 0;
  23.  
  24. void fishTank(int theTime);
  25. void drawWaterLevel();
  26. void doSomething();
  27.  
  28. task blinkFish() {
  29.   while(true) {
  30.     fishTank(theTime);
  31.   }
  32. }
  33.  
  34. task checkFoodSensor() {
  35.  
  36.   while(true) {
  37.  
  38.     if(SensorValue(touchSensor1) == 1) {
  39.       theTime-=10; // Make fish faster
  40.       PlaySoundFile("bloop4.rso");
  41.       wait1Msec(1000);
  42.     }
  43.  
  44.   }
  45.  
  46. }
  47.  
  48. task checkWaterSensor() {
  49.  
  50.   while(true) {
  51.  
  52.     if(SensorValue(touchSensor2) == 1) {
  53.       theWaterLevel+=3; // Add water
  54.       PlaySoundFile("waterSPLASH.rso");
  55.       wait1Msec(1000);
  56.     }
  57.  
  58.   }
  59.  
  60. }
  61.  
  62. task drainWaterAndFood() {
  63.  
  64.   while(true) {
  65.  
  66.     wait1Msec(5000); // Wait 10 seconds
  67.     theTime += 10; // Make fish slower
  68.     theWaterLevel -= 2; // Drain water
  69.  
  70.   }
  71.  
  72. }
  73.  
  74. void drawWaterLevel() {
  75.   eraseDisplay();
  76.   nxtFillRect(0, theWaterLevel, 99, 0);
  77. }
  78.  
  79. task main() {
  80.  
  81.   // Setup all the digital IO ports as outputs (0xFF)
  82.   if (!HTPBsetupIO(HTPB, 0xFF)) StopAllTasks();
  83.   wait1Msec(200);
  84.  
  85.   eraseDisplay();
  86.   drawWaterLevel();
  87.  
  88.   float averageSonicLevel = 0;
  89.  
  90.   for(int i=0; i<5; i++) {
  91.    averageSonicLevel += SensorValue(sonicSensor);
  92.    wait1Msec(500);
  93.   }
  94.  
  95.   averageSonicLevel /= 5;
  96.  
  97.   StartTask(blinkFish);
  98.   StartTask(checkFoodSensor);
  99.   StartTask(checkWaterSensor);
  100.   StartTask(drainWaterAndFood);
  101.  
  102.   float sonicThresh = 10.0;
  103.  
  104.   bool driveMotors = false;
  105.  
  106.   while(true) {
  107.  
  108.     if((SensorValue(sonicSensor) > (averageSonicLevel-sonicThresh) || SensorValue(sonicSensor) < (averageSonicLevel+sonicThresh))) {
  109.  
  110.     doSomething();
  111.  
  112.     } else {
  113.      motor[motorB] = -40;
  114.      motor[motorC] = -40;
  115.      wait1Msec(1000);
  116.     }
  117.  
  118.     drawWaterLevel();
  119.     alive();
  120.  
  121.   }
  122.  
  123. }
  124.  
  125.  
  126. int doSomethingIterations = 0;
  127.  
  128. void doSomething() {
  129.  
  130.   doSomethingIterations++;
  131.  
  132.   motor[motorB] = 40;
  133.   motor[motorC] = 40;
  134.  
  135.   wait1Msec(100);
  136.  
  137. }
  138.  
  139.  
  140. void fishTank(int theTime) {
  141.  
  142.     // LEDs going up
  143.     for(int i=0; i<6; i++) {
  144.       if (!HTPBwriteIO(HTPB, theLEDs[i])) nxtDisplayTextLine(5, "ERR WRITE");
  145.       wait1Msec(theTime);
  146.     }
  147.  
  148.     // LEDs going down
  149.     for(int i=5; i>=0; i–) {
  150.       if (!HTPBwriteIO(HTPB, theLEDs[i])) nxtDisplayTextLine(5, "ERR WRITE");
  151.       wait1Msec(theTime);
  152.     }
  153.  
  154. }

Eventually, I want to have the robot able to drive around in a square (a big square) autonomously. The square is around one of the dorm buildings, so there’s brick walls, stairs, fences, and people to avoid. I think it would be cool because the square is just so confusing at first. You can walk around it 5 times, and still think that you have gone somewhere.

Since a lot of smart people do this, if a robot does it we could imply that it is smart! Bahaha! Logic prevails!

I mentioned that this was originally intended for the activities fair. I also had MANOI there, doing its handshake routine! It went really good. We had a good 15 people show interest, which is surprisingly more than the orchestra, and the tables adjacent to ARC.

But, the table got hit by a frisbee. (Yes, my robot got hit by a frisbee) So, thanks to the jerks at the frisbee club, they messed up MANOI’s other knee (the good one– or what was the good one). So now MANOI has two bad knees, and can’t walk. The goal that I just obtained got wrecked. By a frisbee. Frisbee sucks, really bad.

(so, don’t join frisbee club, they’re morons)

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Posted in: Art, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Store


    The story of my store begins with my Styrobots, which begins with my acceptance into the Stanford EPGY Summer Institutes Artificial Intelligence program for 2008. In order to go there, I needed money! So, I came up with Styrobots.
    All of the money from the store goes towards my Robotic Fund. This enables me to buy parts for the robots that I enjoy creating!
    I appreciate all help! :D


    Google thinks that you may want to check out these pages:

Robotic Fund

Housekeeping