Professor: Marek A. Perkowski, Electrical Engineering.

EE 479/579 Intelligent Robotics II (4).

CHAPTER 11. MOBILE ROBOT PROJECTS: AN INTRODUCTION.

1. Introductions and Chapters 1 and 2 of Martin's book. Especially concentrate on the following:
   • 1.3.1. The Handy Board.
   • 1.3.2. Interactive C.
   • 1.4. Overview of the book. This book you will use as a reference in projects.
   • 2.1. Interactive C and the Handy Board. We are not using this particular board, but all small robot boards are basically similar.
   • Section 2.2 presents how to build a robot from Lego. We have used Lego for prototyping wheeled and walking robots in the past and found them useful. However, our final design will be not Lego.
   • Section 2.3. Read carefully. This is very similar to first homeworks. You will have to write similar programs in Visual C++, Visual Basic, pBasic or LISP.
   • Section 2.4. Breitenberg Vehicles. We build several similar vehicles like these in this class. Useful for first homeworks.
   • Section 2.5. Light and Touch Sensitivity - useful also for SoccerBots.
   • Section 2.6. Randomness. These sections include a lot of code that you can reuse with very little modifications in Robot Theatre and Robot Soccer projects.
   • Section 2.7. Emergence and Meta-Sensing. This section deals with State Machine models discussed in class. Material from it can be also used for walking robots and talking heads.
2. Chapter 1 of Luger's book. AI: History and Applications. This is easy reading - introduction to classical AI. Overview and reading. We will cover all this material in much more detail in Winter and Spring quarters.

SECTION 11.2. MOBILE ROBOTS AND ROBOT SOCCER PROJECTS.

1. Robot Soccer Competitions
   
   
2. Hexapods for robot soccer

1. Robot Soccer.
   
   
2. Introduction to the class and to Intelligent Robotics as a research and development area
   
   
3. What is a robot?
   
   
4. Part 1. Overview of robots Types of robots and their applications.
   
   
5. Inexpensive robots that you can build
   
   
6. Design of Walking Robots.
   
   
7. Genetic Algorithms and Evolution Strategies.
   
   
8. Genetic Programming, Evolutionary Strategies, Evolutionary Design. Fogel. State machines.
   
   
9. Genetic Programming.
   
   
10. Evolutionary Design. Art. Lego bridges of Pollack.

CHAPTER 12. PROLOG LANGUAGE AND APPLICATIONS OF LOGIC PROGRAMMING.

1. Review of Predicate Logic. Basics of Prolog.
   
   
2. Prolog Language.
   
   
3. More Prolog.
   
   
4. State space in Prolog.
   
   
5. Informed search and heuristics in Prolog. I.
   
   
6. Informed search and heuristics in Prolog. II.
   
   
7. Constraints in Prolog.
   
   
8. Representation in Prolog.
   
   
9. Writing large expert systems in Prolog.
   
   

CHAPTER 13. MOTORS AND ACTUATORS. KINEMATICS AND ROBOT DESIGN TECHNIQUES.

Motors and servos. Control from software.
1. Servomechanisms, how do they work? how to use in small robots. Futaba and Hitec servos to be used in projects.
   
   
2. Servos. basics. Motors. Actuators. Kinematics. Design of a simple robot. Types of robots: industrial arms, humanoid heads, hands and arms, mobile wheeled robots, walking robots (hexapods, quadrupeds, bipeds, snakes, inchworms and others).
   
   
3. Motors. Lec4.ppt
   
   
4. Motors. Lec5.ppt
   
   

1. Read Chapter 4 from Martin's book.
   • 4.1. DC motors
   • 4.2. Gearing
   • 4.3. Electronic Control
   • 4.4. The Servo Motor
   • 4.5. Lego design.

CHAPTER 14. SENSORS. COMPUTER VISION HARDWARE.

1. Sensors.
2. Touch sensors.
3. Magnetic sensors.
4. Optical sensors.
5. Infrared sensors.
6. Sonars. Control of sonars. Complete Sonar-Based Imaging system for PSUBOT (PSU robotic wheelchair) - hardware and software.
7. Computer vision hardware. Cameras. Image grabber, look-up table architecture. Complete imaging system of PSUBOT.

1. Read Chapter 3 in Martin's book.
   • 3.1. Sensor Interfacing
   • 3.2. Building Sensors
   • 3.3. Switch Sensors
   • 3.4. Light Sensor Circuits
   • 3.5. Resistive Position Sensors
   • 3.6. Reflective Optosensors
   • 3.7. Break-Beam Sensors
   • 3.8. Shaft Encoding
   • Read Chapter 3 in Martin's book.

CHAPTER 15. LOW-LEVEL IMAGE PROCESSING: FILTERING, THINNING, EDGE-DETECTION, REGION GROWING.

1. Low-level image processing.
2. Noise removal techniques.
3. Convolution-based methods.
4. Sobel, Prewitt and other linear filters.
5. Dilation, erosion, morphological operations and filtering.
6. Discussion of median filtering.
7. Approaches to thinning lines.
8. Labeling.
9. Fast algorithms for region growing and manipulation.
10. Methods for edge detection. Hierarchical approaches, hardware realizations.
11. Programming assignments in C. Integration of tools. Application-related exercises.
12. Use of Intel and Carnegie-Mellon Libraries.

1. Mikhail Pivtoraiko: Image Processing and Server. http://web.pdx.edu/~mikhail/ece478/ece478.htm
   
   
2. Intro Robo Vision.
   
   
3. Convolution in Image Processing
   
   
4. Edge Detection. Image Enhancement. Image Sharpening.
   
   
5. Histogramming.
   
   
6. Thinning
   
   

CHAPTER 16. MEDIUM-LEVEL IMAGE PROCESSING: IMAGE TRANSFORMS, IMAGE MATCHING.

1. Medium-level image processing.
2. Hough Transform for lines. Generalization to algebraic curves. Adaptive and hierarchical Hough Transforms.
3. Fast Fourier, Fast Cosine and Fast Walsh transforms.
4. Pipelined and vector architectures. Hardware realizations.
5. Field Programmable Gate Array computers for image processing.
6. Approaches to fast image matching; geometrical and topological.

1. Hough Transform plus Canny Edge Detection.
   
   
2. Image Segmentation
   
   
3. Hough Transform Ideas.
   
   
4. Hough Transformation - Advanced Transforms.
   
   
5. Morphological Image Processing.
   
   
6. Quad-tree-and-octtree.
   
   
7. Spectral Transforms and Image Processing Software.

CHAPTER 17. ROBOT COMPUTER VISION, USE OF AI TECHNIQUES.

1. Robotic computer vision, use of AI techniques.
2. Scene recognition.
3. Semantic networks and reasoning by analogy.
4. Knowledge-based approaches to vision.
5. Machine learning applied to vision.
6. Approaches to machine learning and their hardware/software realization.
7. Waltz algorithm.
8. Statistical approaches.
9. Fuzzy logic applied to vision.

1. Fuzzy logic applied to vision.

CHAPTER 18. PATTERN RECOGNITION AND MACHINE LEARNING

1. Intro to Machine Learning and Data Mining in Robotics.
   
   
2. Decision Trees
   
   
3. Information theory in learning. Trees, expressions.
   
   

1. Introduction to Neural Nets.
   
   

CHAPTER 19. MOBILE ROBOTS. GUIDEANCE SYSTEMS. PATH PLANNING. COLLISION AVOIDANCE.

1. Mobile robots; guidance systems, path planning, collision avoidance.
2. Artificial Life approaches.
3. Use of fuzzy logic, high-order logic, knowledge-based and learning approaches.
4. Knowledge representation for planning and collision avoidance.
5. Corridor following, maneuvering.
6. Optical feedback.
7. Probabilistic Robots.

1. 000.Overview.ppt
   
   
2. 002.ClassOVerviewGood.pdf
   
   
3. 010.Mobile-Robots.ppt
   
   
4. 011.Sensing-Perception-GOOD.pdf
   
   
5. 013.Noise-Uncertainty-Issues-Autonomous-RobotsGOOD.pdf
   
   
6. 020.Software-agents-for-mobile-robots.ppt
   
   
7. 022.Mapping-with-landmarks.ppt
   
   
8. 031.Collaborative-Robots-GOOD.pdf
   
   
9. 032.Collaborative-Robotics-2-GOOD.pdf
   
   
10. 034.Sensing-Perception-Representation-MultiRobot-GOOD.pdf
    
    

CHAPTER 20. SUBSUMPTION AND BEHAVIORAL APPROACHES.

1. Sensors their role new approaches to perception. In PPT format
   
   
2. Introduction to HMM.
   
   
3. Subsumption Theory.
   
   
4. Examples of Subsumption.
   
   
5. Reactive software.
   
   
6. Behavioral.
   
   
7. Resistive sensors.
   
   
8. HMM in Robotics.
   
   
9. Infrared sensors.
   
   
10. Light Sensors.
    
    
11. Various sensors.
    
    
12. Lego Sensors for prototyping.
    
    
13. Sonar.
    
    
14. Cellular morphogenesis.
    
    
15. Cellular 2.
    
    
16. Cellular reversible
    
    

CHAPTER 21. ROBOT PROGRAMMING.

1. Task planning.
2. Robot languages.
3. Examples of VAL programming.
4. PUMA robot programming. Programming the assembly problem.
5. Programming navigation in 2D and 3D space.
6. Robot programming: VAL and similar languages.
7. Writing robot tasks in LISP, PROLOG, Visual Basic, pBasic, C or C++ (depending on applications). Programming a robot to stack boxes and perform simple assembling tasks.
8. Programming a walking robot: various gaits.

CHAPTER 22. ROBOT INTERFACING.

1. Interfacing.
2. Use of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and Programmable Logic Devices (PLDs).
3. Use of co-processor boards.
4. Interfacing with FFT Processor from Sharp.
5. Analog and digital boards.
6. Fuzzy controller.
7. Sonar interface.

CHAPTER 23. COMPUTER SYSTEMS AND ARCHITECTURES FOR VISION AND ROBOTICS. INEXPENSIVE ROBOT EXAMPLES. AVAILABLE SOLUTIONS AND COMPONENTS.

1. Programmable Devices in Robotics. In PPT format Evolution of electronics technologies. Micro-Controllers and Single-Board Computers. Micro-Controller Board Examples. Basic Stamp examples. The Board of Education. PIC. Digital Signal Processors. Features and applications. DSP architectures. ROM. EPROM. PLD. EPLD. EEPLD. FPGAs. Xilinx. Altera. Volatile vs non-volatile. Our previous projects using these technologies.
   
   
2. Robot Control Architectures. In PPT format. Please review sequential and combinational hardware design from ECE 271 class.
   
   Practical approaches to robotics based on digital design. Sensing. The concept of internal state and total state of the robot. Acting and behavior. Autonomy. Robot control architectures. Control trade-offs. Review of digital design (sometimes). Reactive Robot Systems. Reactive versus Deliberative robots. Hybrid Systems. Behavior-Based Systems. Feedback Control. Feedback and Cybernetics. Grey Walter's Tortoise as a prototype of modern mobile robots. Turtle world. Breitenberg vehicles again. Artificial Intelligence versus robotics in history. Early AI-based robots. Key issues in robotics vs AI. Ideas to think about, related to exams and projects.
   
   
3. Programming Interfacing Basic Stamp. In PPT format. Examples of simple systems for Basic Stamp. LED interfacing. Use of breadboard. Basic Language commands. Basic sensing schemes. Buttons. RCTIME command and examples of its use. Elements of using Basic in robotics. Serial and Analog I/O. Interfacing an accelerometer. Interfacing to MIDI. MIDI programming in pBASIC.
   
   
4. Modular Microcontroller Systems. In PPT format. Modules for microcontroller interfacing. Modular student projects. Mechanical and electrical design of modules. Examples of design.
   
   
5. Examples of microcontroller projects. In PPT format. More practical examples of systems using Basic Stamp. Motor. RF Radio. MIDI and serial communication. Commercial robot kits. MICRO-mouse competition. Robot sculptures.
   
   
6. Kinematics, inverse kinematics, manipulation. Introduction. In PPT format. Kinematics. Effectors and Actuators. DOF. Controllable DOF. Holonomic and redundant robots. Issues in manipulation. Teleoperation. Kinematics versus Inverse Kinematics. Links and joints. Introduction to homogeneous coordinates. Examples of direct kinematics. Dynamic simulators. Wheeled robot examples. Kinematics of differential drive. Kinematics of synchro drive. Inverse kinematics of mobile robots: example. Four Wheel steering. Ackerman steering. Holonomic and non-holonomic robots. Inverse kinematics of robot manipulators. Configuration space. Control. Navigation and motion planning. Vertical Strip Cell decomposition. Manipulation as a challenge and opportunity. Reaching and grasping. Project discussion. (not always).
   
   
7. Hexapods for robot soccer. In PPT format. The perceptions of mobile robot. Visual perceptions. Variants of control structure. Classification of Robot Soccer Systems. Remote-Brainless Systems. Brain-on-board systems. Robot-based Systems. Main PC, communication. Problems to be solved in soccer robotics. Software. FIRA and ROBOCUP. Our robots and potential projects. Past project: hexapod for soccer.
   
   
8. Walking robots design. In PPT format. Hexapod robots. Review of locomotion. Stability of standing and walking. Static stability. A Stable Hopping Leg. Hexapod and Insect walking. How to build your own hexapod: examples. Alternating Tripod Gait. Dynamic Stability. Recent research issues. Bipeds, wheels. Why choose legs? Following trajectories.
   
   
9. Continuation on walking robots design. In PPT format. Walking machine technology. Examples of walking robots. Design of Rough Terrain Vehicle. Prototyping gear trains with Lego. Measuring Legged Locomotion. Power to walk. History of walking robots. Linkage fundamentals. Pivots and Cranks. Generating walking. Crank and Rocker mechanism. Rules for link length. Walking link crank and rocker. Examples of hexapods and bipeds. Hexapod kits from Lynxmotion company: all their electrical components. Examples of larger hexapods from universities and industry. Vision systems.
   
   
10. Introduction to Stimulus Response Production Systems. In PPT format. Robot toys. Control architectures for hexapods. Past research on mobile robot controllers. Control problems for an autonomous robot. Perception and action. Stimulus Response Agents. Mapping perception into action. A robot in a two-dimensional grid. Examples of perception, action, and logic control. Reactive agents. Feature selection. Obelix Robot. Production systems. Representing and Implementing actions. Disscussion of issues for soccer robots. Teleo-reactive programs. Black-board architectures. Computer simulation of robots. Models of Braitenberg vehicles. Views of simulation. Events and discrete time. Visualization. Micro-Mouse competition. Algorithms. Behavior description and modeling. Automata, tables, functions, decision tables. State Transition Diagrams. State Transition Tables. State Transition charts. New models to describe concurrency. Categorizing robot architectures. Various taxonomies of robot architectures.
    
    
11. Deliberative SPA. In PPT format. Planning and deliberative behaviors. Mind and Body in AI. Classical AI and its influence on robotics. Sense-Plan-Act paradigm. The control cycle in SPA. Examples in path generation, motion planning, navigation. Model-based architectures. Problems.

1. FPGA Hardware Processor for face recognition.
   
   
2. Computer architectures for vision and robotics.
3. Pipelined image processors, convolvers.
4. Neural networks.
5. Fuzzy logic controllers.
6. DSP processors.
7. Processors for solving logic, matching and other combinatorial problems: Cube Calculus Machine.

CHAPTER 24. GROUP ROBOTICS. ROBOT COLONIES. ROBOT SOCIETIES. SOCIAL ROBOTICS.

1. Evolving game strategies. In PDF format. Characteristics of Intelligent Agent Systems. Major tasks performed by intelligent agent systems. Practical applications of IA. Evolving game playing strategies. Agent Based Modeling. Types of agent based modeling. Prisoner's Dilemma. PD as a model of Nature. Payoff Matrix. Deterministic strategies for PD. Tit for Tat. Axelrod's Tournaments. Downfall of deterministic strategies. Beyond Determinism. Stochastic Strategies. PD in Nature. Spatial chaos. Case studies. Evolution of behavior in Nature. Levels of Selection. Cooperative Breeding.
   
   
2. Group Robotics. In PDF format. .
   
   
3. Group Robotics continued. In PDF format. .
   
   
4. Choosing how to behave.
   
   
5. Simulated Societies and Group Learning for robots.
   
   

CHAPTER 25. VARIOUS APPLICATIONS OF ROBOTS AND ROBOTIC TECHNOLOGY.

1. Various categories of robots: robots in battlefield.
2. Uses of robotic technology in manufacturing: stationary versus mobile robots.
3. Incorporation of smart sensors.
4. Virtual Reality.
5. Robots in entertainment.

1. Robots in entertainment. See webpage of Portland Cyber Theatre.

CHAPTER 26. ROBOTS IN MANUFACTURING.

1. Part 2. Overview of robots Robots for Exploration. Outdoor mobile robots. Servicing or Assistive robots. Underwater robots. Intervention robots.
   
   
2. Part 3. Overview of robots Robots for the military and police. JPL planetary surface robot. Robot requirements. Outdoor big Walking Robots. LEMUR robot from JPL. Multi-Robot Control Architecture. Other robots for planetary exploration. Microrovers. Autonomous cars and vehicles. Driver's assistance. Autonomous helicopters. Agriculture and Field Robots. Agricultural Vehicle Automation. Climbing robots. Applications to medicine. Surgery robots. Training. ROBODOC. Prostheses.
   
   
3. Part 4. Overview of robots Micro-robots. Social behaviors of micro-robots. Multi-Purpose Humanoid Robots. Honda Robot. Science Fiction Humanoid robots. COG from MIT. Robot dogs from Japan. Entertainment robots. Toys. "Spiritul robots"of Kurzweil.

CHAPTER 27. DISCUSSING PROJECTS AND ASIGNMENTS.