Part I: The Pilot and Odometry
Remember at the start of every lab to do a "make" on your workstation
and then do "sendtekkotsu" so your robot is running the latest version
of the software. We will do this lab using tekkotsu-CREATE. Please
finish this part using the robot instead of Mirage.
- Write a three-state state machine called StarLeg that causes the
robot to first travel forward by 750 mm, then turn right by 144°,
and then post a completion event using a PostMachineCompletion node.
You will need this completion event for the next step.
- Write a state machine Star5 that calls the StarLeg state machine
(nested inside it) five times, causing the robot to execute a
trajectory in the shape of a five-pointed star. Make Star5 a child of
PilotDemo, and name your first state node rundemo so it shows up
in the PilotDemo menu.
- Start the Star5 behavior, then bring up the world map by clicking
on "W" in the Sketch row of the ControllerGUI. Note that the Agent
shape (the robot) starts out at (0,0) with heading 0.
- Note the initial position and heading of your robot. Type "msg
rundemo" to start the robot on its trajectory. If the robot moves
perfectly, it should end up back at its starting pose. Where does the
robot actually end up?
- Hit the Refresh button in the SketchGUI and record the Agent's
estimated position and heading. How closely do they match the robot's
actual pose? How far have the localization particles dispersed?
- Double click on Star5 to stop the behavior. When you start it
again, the robot's pose will again be initialized to (0,0) with
heading 0°. Run the behavior four more times and record the
robot's estimated position and heading at the end of each run. Report
the values for all five runs in a table and also give the mean and the
standard deviation. Hand in this table as part of your lab report,
along with your code.
Part II: Mirage and the VeeTags Demo
- Run Mirage by following the instructions on the wiki's Running
Mirage page, but use the VeeTags world instead of the tic-tac-toe
world.
- Try flying around in the world using various commands from the Mirage
Command Summary page.
- Run the VeeTags demo in Root Control > Framework Demos >
Navigation Demos > VeeTags. Drive the robot around for a bit and
then use the PilotDemo's "loc" command to localize. Watch what the
particles do. Note: the Pilot wants to see at least two landmarks in
order to localize. If you leave the robot in a position where two
landmarks are not in view, the Pilot will turn the robot to try to
find more landmarks.
- Write a behavior that uses a series of walk requests to
circumnavigate the vee-shaped barrier. You don't have to use any
vision for this; just assume that the robot starts at (0,0) facing
north, and code up a trajectory to get the robot around the barrier
and back to its starting position. Have the behavior print out the
robot's estimated position and heading at the end of this trajectory.
Then your behavior should use the Pilot's localize operation to
update its position and heading estimates, and print out the updated
values. How does localization affect the estimates? Manually
calculate the distance between the robot's position estimate before
and after localization. Run your behavior five times and hand in a
table of your results showing the initial position and heading
estimates, the updated estimates, and the differences between
them.
Part III: The Mirage World Builder
If you have time, you should start this part in the lab. Finish it
for homework. Your answers should be turned in as Homework 2, due
Friday, February 10.
- Visit the web page for the 2012 ARTSI
Robotics Competition and scroll down to the description of the
Object Pushing Event. In this part of the lab you are going to
contribute something to help the students working on this event.
- Construct a Mirage world that will allow students to solve this
event using the Mirage simulator. You world must contain a square
drawn with blue lines, and five red cylinders randomly positioned
outside the square. Be sure to set appropriate vallues for the
collision and mass attributes.
- Do a cd to ~/project/ms/config and rename the file Create.kin to
Create.kin.original. Then download the file CreatePusherBar.kin and rename it
to ~/project/ms/config/Create.kin. Run Tekkotsu with Mirage and
notice that your simulated robot now has a pusher bar attached to
it.
- One of the Create robots in the lab has a set of aluminum paddles
bolted to it, like the ones shown on the competition web page. Edit
the Create.kin file to change the pusher bar to a pair of paddles,
matching the size and position of the physical paddles as best you
can. You do not have to model the entire 3D paddle structure, just
the one big rectangular segment that does all the work. Note: search
for "pusher" in the .kin file to find where the pusher bar is
defined.
- Try driving the robot around in your competition world (you can
use the Walk Controller for this since we don't care about good
odometry) and use the paddles to push the red cylinders into the
square.
- The robot always starts in Mirage at location(0,0), facing north.
Using the PilotDemo commands to preserve odometry, you could drive the
robot until it is positioned with a red cylinder in its paddles. Now,
since you know where the center of the blue square is located, all the
robot needs to do is turn towards the square and then move
forward for an appropriate distance. Since odometry tells us the
robot's present position (see the Pilot lecture notes for how to
retrieve this information), it is easy to calculate in the doStart()
method of a PilotNode the turn angle and distance required to reach
the center of the square. Write a behavior to do this. You start the
behavior with the robot in its initial position (use the Mirage "r"
command to reset the world if necessary). You use PilotDemo commands
to guide the robot to a red cylinder. Then you give the "rundemo"
command to start your state machine and it should push the cylinder
into the square.
What to Hand In
Hand in your source code for all the above problems, plus the two
tables of statistics, the .ian file for your Mirage world, your
modified Create.kin file, and a screen shot showing your robot with
its simulated paddles.
Dave Touretzky and
Ethan Tira-Thompson
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