Welcome to Intro to Intelligent Robotics. We'll be going interesting places in this course. Prof. Hougen, 12 January 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To allow students to make progress in the class even if they have not been able to get their hands on the textbooks yet, the TA has scanned the first chapters of Murphy and Martin and Appendix D of Martin into a PDF file. I have placed this file on the course web site for you. See the "Scanned Chapters" link. Please note that the file is somewhat large (>8MB), so you may wish to view it from campus if you do not have a high-speed connection at home. Prof. Hougen, 15 January 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homework 1 has been added to the class web pages. Prof. Hougen, 16 January 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will need to move my office hour for this coming Friday (Jan. 30) from 12:00-1:00 to 2:00-3:00. Prof. Hougen, 27 January 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- My apologies for needing to cancel class on Wednesday of this week, due to illness. We will maintain the schedule given with the project for demonstrations, presentations, and submission of written materials. We will also keep the same exam schedule: First Exam Friday, Feb. 20. Regarding tracking color, Dr. David Miller suggested that we look at the resources available at the following URL: You might also want to look at resources in this directory: For more explicit advice, note the following instructions for tracking colors have been sent by our TA Pedro Diaz-Gomez to at least two members of each group: -----------------------begin included message------------------------- In order to track colors in the camera, one way can be the following: 1. the swith of the adapter dongle must be in the middle. 2. the HB must be on. 3. Down load the CMUcam 1.1c GUI (in java)from the link in Dr Hougen's home page. 4. run the CMUcamGUI. 5. it appears a window asking if the serial port is 1 we answer OK. 6. it appears some windows. 7. In the CMUcamGUI window in the mode option choose Line Dump Mode. 8. put the color to track in front of the camera. 9. In the CMUcamGUI window in the Commands option choose Dump Frame. 10. the color of the object appears in the screen and in 11. the Color Picker appear the values of Red Green and Blue. 12. If the mouse is moved in the picture that was got by the camera the values in the Color Picker begin to change. These range of values give the minimun and maximun for Red Green and Blue. If for example after doing the last steps, we put the blue paper we get: Red less 41 Red greater 77 Green less 95 Green Greater 163 Blue less 83 Blue Greater 143 If we use, after initializing the camera: if (trackRaw(41, 77, 95, 163, 83, 143) > 0) and the color blue is in front of the camera, the result is going to be TRUE. As is suggested in the notes the value 0 (zero) of the condition could be greater, and it really can be. -------------------------end included message------------------------ For those groups looking for help in driving and turning, note that the following three groups did the best in the in-class demonstration with the following scores (last year's project 1): 1 & 3 Full Points plus Bonus 7 Full Points (no Bonus Attempted) Prof. Hougen, 12 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note that I have made a discussion board available to the members of these courses (both 4023 and 5023) through BlackBoard. Prof. Hougen, 12 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- All students interested in robotics outside the classroom and/or in who may be joining our faculty here at OU are invited to attend a talk TOMORROW: Guilherme DeSouza, "A Vision-Based Architecture for Smart Robotics" Wednesday, February 18, 10:30-11:30, student Q & A period follows. CEC 100. See for details. Prof. Hougen, 17 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- For those of you looking for the "Jones" reading material listed in the schedule, this is a reference to the code we discussed recently in class. It is available at under "Code Examples." It IS included among the materials you could be tested on tomorrow. Prof. Hougen, 19 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- For students wishing a USB-serial adapter for your laptops, one cheap (~$10) possibility can be found at: It is known to work with IC4 using SOME operating systems (Windows XP, Mac OS 10.1 and 10.2) but NOT others (Mac 10.3, for example). The Keyspan USB-PDA adapter is said to work with more operating systems, including Linux. It should be about ~$30. Prof. Hougen, 20 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The review forms have been added to the class web pages. Please note that once you begin a particular set of reviews, you cannot "log out" and "log back in." That is, if you want to log in and see the review forms, log out and decide on your answers, then log in and complete the reviews, that is fine. However, once you fill in and submit one review in a set, you cannot log out then come back to that set later on. The "Project 1 Peer Review of Team Members" set of reviews will be due before class on Friday. The deadline for the reviews of other teams' material will be announced once the material from all teams has been submitted and placed on the class web site. Prof. Hougen, 23 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pedro Diaz-Gomez, our TA, will need to move one of his office hours this week. It will be Friday, 10:30 to 11:30, rather than Wednesday. Prof. Hougen, 24 February 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The electronic copies of all teams' materials for project 1 have been added to the class web pages. Please start reading those so that you can review the other teams' work. Also, please review your own materials, to ensure that they are all present. Prof. Hougen, 9 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note on the CMUcam from Prof. Miller: Because of the way the CMUcams are powered when attached to the HB, the servo drive circuit has been removed to avoid burning out the HB 5v supply. Prof. Hougen, 20 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Remember that we'll be starting the project 2 demonstrations (Botball tournament) on Tuesday of this week. We'll have seeding rounds throughout the day on Tuesday. On Monday each team will sign up for one 1/2 hour time slot in which they'll do all three attempts with any changes they need between them. The double elimination competition will be during class on Wednesday and Friday mornings (9:30 - 10:20). On Wednesday we'll go until seven of the eight teams have lost once. On Friday we'll go until seven of the eight teams have lost twice. Prof. Hougen, 20 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- My additional office hour for today (to replace the missed hour on the Friday before Spring Break) will be 3:00 - 4:00. Prof. Hougen, 22 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- As announced in class, I will not be available for my regular office hours on Thursday and Friday this week. Instead, I will have one office hour today (Monday) from 1:00 to 2:00 and another on Wednesday from 3:00 to 4:00. Prof. Hougen, 29 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I will be giving a talk on robotics and machine learning tomorrow (Tuesday) for the CS Graduate Student Association. The talk will be 3:00 to 4:00 in the AME Conference Room (Felgar Hall 214/216). Prof. Hougen, 29 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- As discussed in class, your second exam is on Friday of this week. The new chapters it will cover are chapters 5-7, not 5-8 as listed in the schedule. The new papers it will cover are the second paper by Brooks, the paper by Thrun, and the paper by Simmons, et al.; it will not cover the paper by Albus or the paper by Guzzoni, et al. I have posted the second exam from last year to give you an example of the types of questions that might be asked on this exam. Note, however, that the material covered this year is not exactly the same as the material covered last year (e.g., we haven't yet covered RCS in the Albus paper). Prof. Hougen, 31 March 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- As with this week, next week I will not be able to hold my regularly- scheduled office hours. Instead I will hold replacement hours on Monday (April 5) from 1:00 to 2:00 and Tuesday (April 6) from 4:00 to 5:00. Prof. Hougen, 2 April 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- After some problems getting the gripper patch for gazebo installed and tested yesterday, I believe that it is ready to go on the CSN Linux machines. To see it work, run gazebo /usr/local/share/gazebo/worlds/pioneer2dxGrip.world then (probably in another terminal because gazebo will be sending its text output to the one you just used) use: player -p 7000 -g default /usr/local/share/gazebo/worlds/pioneer2dxGrip.config& (or another port, if you find 7000 is in use). This will connect player to gazebo. Then (you can use the same terminal window) run: /usr/local/share/player/examples/c++/manualGrip You may use the following commands in the terminal to control the gripper. Command : Character to enter (always followed by enter) ----------------------------------------------------------- Open gripper : o Close gripper : c Stop gripper : x Lift up : u Lift down : d Lift stop : s Deploy : w Store : q Halt : h If you are running gazebo on another machine and would like the patches to use a gripper there, please let me know. Prof. Hougen, 20 April 2004 P.S. This patch also includes code for a gazebo sonar but this does not appear to be properly working at this time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please note, we have not received electronic submissions or parts of electronic submissions from groups 2, 3, 5, and 7 for project 2. Also, we have only received electronic submissions for the Team Organization and Task Allocation document and the Timeline with Milestones and Fallback Plan document from group 6 for project 3. Please turn in these documents as soon as possible. Prof. Hougen, 20 April 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pedro Diaz-Gomez, our TA, will need to move his office hours for Monday of next week from 8:30-9:30 to 10:30-11:30. Prof. Hougen, 22 April 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Project 3 schedule: You can turn in your project 3 code and world files (everything needed to run your robot) up until midnight on Wednesday without late penalty. You can turn in your project 3 reports (soft copies) up until midnight on Thursday without late penalty. You can turn in hard copies of all of the above at class on Friday without late penalty. Prof. Hougen, 26 April 2004