Embedded Motion Control 2017 Group 4

Initial design

Introduction

In this design chapter, the initial design of a maze solving robot is specified in terms of requirements, specifications, components, functions and interfaces. It is implemented on the PICO hardware platform. A task-skill-motion framework is used in order to describe the robot behaviour. This will also be implemented in C++.

Requirements and specifications

PICO is required to autonomously navigate through a maze and find the exit without bumping into any of the walls. A door will be present in the maze, and must be opened by "ringing the bell" in a suitable location whilst standing still. Open spaces might be present, and the walls are approximately axis aligned. The maze might also feature loops. Therefore PICO is required to do the following:

• Recognize walls and corridors in a robust manner. The walls are axis aligned, however not perfectly. PICO should allow for an alignment error. It also has to stay away from the walls with a sufficient margin (e.g. 10 cm between robot and wall). Bumping into a wall will count as a failed attempt.
• Identify possible "door areas" in a robust manner. "The door will be situated at a dead end, a dead end being defined as a piece of wall with minimum length 0.5 meter and maximum length 1.5 meter with side-walls of at least 0.3 meter length". Alignment errors again need to be taken into account.
• Map the maze to determine whether the area has been visited and to build a world model. Odometry and Laser Range Finder (LRF) are used to build a world map and determine the location in the world. The odometry and LRF data should be synchronized to avoid drift in world location and mapping (SLAM).
• Recognize corners as nodes in order to build an abstract and simplified maze representation consisting of nodes and lines.
• Cary out a maze solving strategy based on its world model and solve and execute corresponding routing. The solving routine and the routing should be able to handle loops and open spaces and are based on the simplified maze representation. This enables more general strategy composition and faster computation.
• Open doors by ringing a bell in the door area. No part of PICO should be located outside the 1.3 meter range of the door and PICO should be standing still whilst ringing the bell. The door opens completely within 5 seconds after PICOs request. Once the door is completely open, PICO needs to pass the open doorway to find the exit of the maze.
• The software should be easy to set up and deploy, i.e. using git pull and with a single executable.
• Clear the maze as soon as possible, with a total available time of seven minutes for two attempts. A maximum speed of 0.5 m/s translational and 1.2 rad/s rotational is given.
• Do not stand still for more than thirty seconds when inside the maze.
• Recognize when the maze is solved.

Components

Pico features a Laser Range Finder (LRF) to detect surrounding obstacles and wheel encoders to measure odometry data. The wheel base is holonomic, enabling it to turn on the spot and drive in any direction. An emergency button is present on the remote. PICO runs on batteries and should always be charging when not driving around.

The software runs on an Intel i7 processor running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. The Robotic Operating System (ROS) is used as a framework for PICOs software. However, an intermediate software layer is provided which can be used to access sensor data and actuate the robot. This software layer is divided into five main components: actuation, sensing, world model, task manager and skill.

Functions

• Configuration: Defines a number of parameters. This is a header file so no inputs or

outputs.