Retake Embedded Motion Control 2018

Follow Me!

Context

An increase of robotic deployment is nowadays observed; one could think about care robots for elderly care, AGV's for industrial application, or even a simple vacuum robot in a typical household. Repositioning these robots often occurs manually as, e.g., one picks them up or controls them (via a joystick) to a given position. This, however, may not always be desired as you may for example want the robot to carry something with you (maybe a table). We thus ask you guys to design a person following algorithm to solve this problem.

Task description

The main objective of this assignment is to follow a person in a cluttered environment - more details about the environment are given further below - for a time span of 2 minutes. The Person Of Interest (POI) will walk a pre-defined route, and on important points we will put down so-called 'target strips' which the POI will cross. To test whether PICO is indeed able to follow the POI correctly, PICO should also cross these target strips. A brief overview of the setup is shown on Figure 1.

Some specifications of interest:

• The POI will start initially close to PICO at standstill. After PICO starts following him, the POI will move with a velocity greater than 0 meter per second, but no more than 0.5 meter per second.
• The target strips can be regarded as markers on the floor which PICO should not be able to recognize. These target strips have a width of 1 meter, and the POI will pass through the middle of these target strips. The number of target strips should be around 5.
• We recommend that PICO follows the POI at a distance of approximately 0.5 meter; this will guarantee that PICO crosses the target strips.
• A failure is stated when the following observations are made: 1. PICO is unable to cross 80% of the target strips 2. PICO bumps into the POI. If a failure is determined, then you can retry once (thus a total of 2 takes).

Figure 1: A graphical representation of the setup of the assignment. The pre-defined path is indicated by the dashed lines, the target strips by the black lines perpendicular to the pre-defined path, the POI that follows the pre-defined path in blue, and PICO in red.

Regarding the cluttered environment, three 'levels' are designed ranging from easiest to hardest. To pass this course, we ask you to at least clear level 1, i.e., the easiest task. Clearing any subsequent levels will naturally allow you to pass this course with a better grade.

Other relevant information

We will grade you on the basis of your performance