Embedded Motion Control 2013

Guide towards the assignment
'A-MAZE-ING PICO'

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Introduction

This course is about software design and how to apply this in the context of autonomous robots. The accompanying assignment is about applying this knowledge to a real-life robotics task in which ROS will be the standard software framework.

Course Schedule and Lecture Slides

Lectures will be given on Wednesdays from 10.45 - 12.30 in Gemini-Zuid 3A08. The course schedule is as follows:

September, 4th	Introduction	Assignment and basic computer setup ‎
September, 11th	Localization	C++ and ROS Concepts
September, 18th	Navigation	Software design
September 25th	Corridor competition
October, 2nd	Separation of Concerns: the 5 C's
October 9th	State estimation	Whole-body motion planning and control
October 16th	Intelligent agents
October 23th	Final competition

Pico test schedule, maze

In order to test your software on the Pico robot, each group has one one hour time slot a week available. You can test on the following days:

• Wednesday 18-09-2013
• Thursday 19-09-2013
• Friday 20-09-2013
• Monday 23-09-2013
• Thursday 26-09-2013

You can reserve your test slot in the table below. Make sure to keep at least one hour in between your slot and the previous and next ones, since Pico and its laptop need some time to recharge in between the time slots!

Date	Time	Group
18-09-2013	9.00-10.00	Group 9
18-09-2013	16.00-17.00	Group 11
19-09-2013	9.00-10.00	Group 8
19-09-2013	11.00-12.00	Group 2
19-09-2013	13.00-14.00	Group 3
19-09-2013	16:00-17:00	Group 5

Goal

The goal of the assignment is to get the real-time concepts in embedded software design operational.

The concrete task that has to be solved is to let the PICO robot find his way out of a maze. The final demonstration by each participating group of 4-5 students will be performed during a contest, the winner of which is the group that exits the maze in the shortest amount of time. To prepare for this competition the following guidelines have to be considered:

• to test with PICO and to prepare for the final contest, a simulator will be made available that mimics the in and outputs to the real robot. Specifics of this simulator will be presented in the first lecture on September 4th
• the maze of the final competition will be constructed just before the competition. The maze presented in the simulator is therefore different from the real one used in the final contest.
• both on the real and simulated PICO robot, three sources of sensor information will be available to perceive the environment and to derive the state of the robot:
  • laserdata provided by the forward pointing laser scanner,
  • images captured by the monocular camera,
  • odometry provided by the base controller
• the robot can be actuated by sending information to the base controller
• during the final contest, it is highly imperative that the PICO robot refrains from colliding with the walls in the maze. Colliding with the walls will result in severe time-penalties.
• the walls of the maze will contain several types of pointers to the exit, which can potentially help PICO to speed up execution of the task Click here for a pdf file containing the arrow we will use. We also captured PICO's camera topics in a bag file while the robot was looking at the arrow. You can play this bag file as follows:

  rosbag play 2013-10-08-15-35-04.bag

  The topics /pico/camera and /pico/camera_info should then become available. For example, while playing the bag file, use

  rosrun image_view image_view image:=/pico/camera

  to view the camera images.

Corridor Competition

An intermediate review will be held on May 16th, during the corridor competition. During this challenge the students have to let the robot drive through a corridor and then take the first exit. The precise location of this exit will not be given in advance. Some facts:

The exit can be either left or right It is not known beforehand how far the exit is located from the start (somewhere between 1 and 10 meters) It is not known beforehand if the opposing end wall (on the far end) will be open or closed The walls are approximately parallel to each other Note: the walls might not be perfectly straight The distance between the walls is not known in advance, but will be reasonable (somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 meters). The distance between the walls will be fairly constant throughout the corridor, 'fairly' meaning that we build the corridor by hand, and the distance may change a little along the corridor. PICO will start with its laser range finder between the walls PICO will be approximately facing the end of the corridor. (Notice: approximately, so don't just drive forward for n seconds!) At the exit, the finish line is located approximately 30 cm from the side of the corridor (Notice: approximately, so don't just drive forward for 30 cm!). The walls that can be used to align PICO will be a little bit longer. You have finished the assignment if PICO did not drive into walls, took the correct turn, the castor wheels are across the finish line. Hitting the wall will result in 0 points!

During the final contest, the groups are expected to give a short (5 minute) presentation about their progress and design decisions. During the corridor competition no presentation is expected.

Hardware

The mobile PICO robot with monocular camera and laser range finder with a working ROS interface. In addition, we provide a Jazz simulator for offline testing.

Getting Started

To get started, please do the following tutorials:

• This manual describes how to the install the necessary and sufficient software to start programming the PICO robot.
• C++ tutorials:
  • cplusplus.com
  • MIT's Introduction to C++
  • C++ Glossary
• ROS tutorial
  • Note that you have already installed and configured your ROS environment, so you can skip the first tutorial.
  • Skip tutorials about Catkin and choose the rosbuild version of a tutorial when possible
  • It is advised to work in your group folder, i.e., ~/ros/emc/emc?.
• Getting started with the Jazz simulator
• Using Pico

FAQ

Here you can find a collection of Frequently Asked Questions. Please check this page before contacting Yanick or the tutors! If you find any issues or questions you had to deal with, please add them as well so your colleagues don't run into the same problems.

Group Wiki Pages

Group 01 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Jos Elfring -

Group 02 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Rob Janssen -

Group 03 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Janno Lunenburg -

Group 04 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: - -

Group 05 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Sjoerd van den Dries -

Group 06 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: - -

Group 07 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Jos Elfring -

Group 08 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Rob Janssen -

Group 09 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Janno Lunenburg -

Group 10 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Sjoerd van den Dries -

Group 11 - Visit Wiki - Tutor: Jos Elfring -

Contact Details

In case of questions related to working with the real Jazz robot or general ROS/C++ questions, please contact Yanick. For questions regarding the simulator or the svn, please contact Sjoerd.

Student Assistent

Yanick Douven - y dot g dot m dot douven at student dot tue dot nl

Tutors

Sjoerd van den Dries - S dot v dot d dot Dries at tue dot nl

Luis Ferreira - L dot F dot Bento dot Ferreira at tue dot nl

Janno Lunenburg - J dot J dot M dot Lunenburg at tue dot nl