My work for the Intelligent Robots Workshop

This happened freshman year, but I thought I should start this blog by showing what I've been working on in the past too, so as to make it as chronological (and complete) as possible. So here it goes: the robotics class. The recompiled version of what I submitted at the end of the semester.

Before the RKC Opening:

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  Mapping team.

  • I was on the mapping team and made the lobby and Lab map. We measured the lab and the lobby, used the building plans and drew the map using Mapper3Basic, a program which is used to make maps our robot understands. The program uses lines to denote walls or detectable surfaces and forbidden lines and areas to denote spaces where the robot shouldn't go. We also set a home spot (the green area in the lab).
    
    
    
    
    
    
  
  
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  Poster-making person.

  • Adrian and I thought the concept out and made the poster in PowerPoint. Unfortunately the PowerPoint was too small so I had to remake the whole thing the following morning. I named the robot Scavengex and somebody added stone robot- I left it that way-- I thought it sounded interesting. Each of the teams added details about the work they've been doing and we also added a Future Goals section. All in all, I believe it was a very nice poster.
    
    
    
    
    
    
  
  

During the RKC Opening:

I was very active during the RKC opening. I was always around Scavengex, made demonstrations with him and was around to force-stop it if it malfunctioned. Which indeed happened, as it attacked somebody's leg . I was quite unhappy we weren't able to show Reem and Kayden the robot's proper appreciation by making it go in the place where it would say "Thank you, Reem and Kayden for giving me a home!" but they enjoyed the robot anyway. And I liked the RKC opening .

After the RKC opening:

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  Learning some C++.

  
  
  
  I have started with basic C++ learning but stopped at about chapter 10 realizing that this is so much like C combined with Java that if I needed to know anything else I will just look it up. So I gave up on that. And moved on.
  
  
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  Aria and Vislib integration.

  
  
  
  I am working on integrating Aria and Vislib right now. I almost got it working. I've compiled it and it's working. I just have to figure out how to simulate my program and test it. Then we'll integrate my program with the GUI-server program and we'll have a robot that's not blind anymore. Yay! (Although he only sees in grayscale.) UPDATE! I managed to make the program work, I tested it and the robot "SEES". Also, I saw that it sees color, so we are actually making progress. I had some problems with compling the code, so I'll document it on the wiki.
  
  
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  Speech recognition.

  
  
  
  Also, I have installed Sphinx and am working on speech recognition. I have learned about HMMs and am planning to have our robot act somewhat intelligently. It will ask humans yes and no questions and act accordingly. Maybe later it would be able to answer human questions or even handle a more intelligent conversation. Unfortunately, the microphone doesn't seem to work in Fedora right now... I have documented the errors I got, on the wiki.
  
  

So, now you're probably wondering what the RKC is and what was the "opening" about. RKC stands for the "Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation", and is basically Bard's science building, the place where the computer science faculty have their offices and where all the computer science classes are. It also houses biology and chemistry. The "opening" was organized as the inauguration ceremony of this new building, and my class prepared a demonstration of our project for it. To read more about the RKC, check this link. To see some pictures from the opening ceremony, check this and this links.