PROJECTS IN THE INTELLIGENT ROBOTICS LABORATORY

Marek Perkowski, Professor ECE, Intelligent Robotics Laboratory



Below you will find the list of previous, current and future projects in the laboratory. Many of the future projects have been also past projects, but now we have much better software and hardware.

You are welcome to join one or more of these projects at any time. Students taking my ``Formal Verification'' and ``Digital Design using VHDL and VERILOG'' classes can take in them projects related to robotics. For instance

We are preparing two demos of our lab.
The first demo will be on March 3 during the Open House and Lab dedication ceremony. It will include Experiments number 1, 2 and 3. May be some more.

The second demo will be on May 22 during the Logic, Design and Learning Workshop being a part of the International Symposium on Multiple-Valued Logic. It will include (improved) Experiments number 1, 2 and 3 and elements of other projects (mainly software).

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 1

MOTORS, SENSORS, AND ELECTRONICALLY PROGRAMMABLE DEVICES

PEOPLE: Michael Kennan, Brandon Curry

EQUIPMENT: OWI Robots and components, LEGO Mindstorms kits, Robix kits, stepper motors, various sensors, EPLDs and EPLD programmer.

PROJECT STARTED: Summer 1999.

The goal of this project is to familiarize students with some of the basic technologies used in robotics.

Tasks:
  1. Assembling a complete robotix arm from OWI kit. (Michael - February 2000)
  2. Adding various kinds of sensors to the arm: end-sensors, temperature sensors, angle measurements. (Michael - February 2000).
  3. Programming EPLDs for simple movements. (Michael - February 2000).
  4. Signal convertions. A/D and D/A, voltage/current.
  5. Stepper motors. Control of stepper motors with PCs and EPLDs.
  6. DC motors.
  7. Little mobile robots from toys.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 2

INTEGRATION OF VOICE CONTROL AND COMPUTER VISION IN A TESTING/PROBLEM-SOLVING ROBOT ARM RHINO

PEOPLE: Alan Mishchenko, Justin Kam, Ron Fehlen, Xiong (Bear) Wei,

EQUIPMENT: RHINO ROBOT with controller and interface, Intel camera, microphone and speach recognition. NEEDS NEW PENTIUM PC.

PROJECT STARTED: Fall 1999.

The goal of this project is to familiarize students with two robotics technologies: voice recognition and simple computer vision. Other goals are:
  1. Manual control of a robot.
  2. Simple robotic control language Robotalk.
  3. Learning about mechanics of a robotic arm. Kinematics and Inverse problem.
  4. Serial and Parallel interface.
  5. Test generation, fault location.


Tasks:
  1. Learning and fixing the mechanics, electronics and software of Rhino. (Anas, Justin, Ron - completed)
  2. Adding mechanical components, fixtures and environments for future experiments. (Anas and Justin - completed)
  3. Designing the Electric Board for testing. (Anas and Justin - completed)
  4. Writing software for Intel Camera to find edges of the board and calculate its angle on the conveyor belt. (Cecilia Espinosa, Shiliang Wang, Bear and Justin Kam - completed)
  5. Writing software to generate testing/fault localization signals for Electric Board. (Alan - completed).
  6. Writing software to move the Electric Board to the test location. (Anas and ...).
  7. Writing high-level software script to link test software and robot movements. (Justin and ... ).
  8. Writing software to test the Electric Board with tests from Alan's program. (Justin and ... ).
  9. Writing software for voice control (Ron Fehlen - completed).

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 3

MACHINE LEARNING FOR MULTI-ARM ROBOT MUVAL

PEOPLE: Alan Mishchenko, Anas Al-Rabadi.

EQUIPMENT: MUVAL ROBOT with controller and interface, Intel cameras, microphone and speach recognition. NEEDS NEW PENTIUM PC.

PROJECT STARTED: Spring 1999.

The goal of this project is to familiarize students with machine learning in robotics applications. This robot has a head (with 10 degrees of freedom), two hands (each with 5 degrees of freedom) and two legs (each with 5 degrees of freedom). It needs 7 parallel ports to control all movements. (one parallel port for sensors).

Other goals of the project are:
  1. Design of Simple Robotic Control Language in C++ (your own design, starting from Parallel Port programming). Manual control of the robot with your commands. Sensor integration.
  2. Use of genetic programming in C++ to solve the inverse problem. (Anas).
  3. Mechanics of a multi-arm robots. Kinematics and Inverse problem. Conflict avoidance. (Anas).
  4. State Machine acquisition from examples. (Alan).
  5. State Machine optimization. (Alan).
  6. Multi-valued functions and relations acquisition from examples.
  7. Multi-valued functions and relations decomposition with Occam Razor principles. (Alan)
  8. Neural Net program (Ana Svobodova and ,... ).


Tasks:
  1. Interfacing parallel ports to MUVAL (Dennis Young - end of January 2000).
  2. Simple language. (Alan - end of January 2000).
  3. Sensors and Genetic Program-based Control (Anas - end of February 2000).

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 4

ANTROPOMORPHIC ROBOTIC HEAD

PEOPLE: Mike Levy.

EQUIPMENT: Robix kit, Lego kit, Erector set. PC computer.

PROJECT STARTED: Fall 1999.

The goal of this project is to familiarize students with:
  1. antropomorphic head design (role of bones, muscles, possible movements, human emotions as expressed in facial movements).
  2. electric control of movements (servo and stepper motors).
  3. creating simple language to describe movements, emotions, speech synchronization, singing and facial gestures.


This robotic head the following degrees of freedom.
  1. Two eyes, two degrees of freedom each = 4
  2. Two eyebrows, one degree of freedom each = 2
  3. Mouth = 6.
  4. Jaw = 2.
  5. Two cheeks, two degrees of freedom each = 4.
  6. TOTAL: 18.


Tasks:
  1. Mechanical design. (Mike - end of February 2000).
  2. Software. (Mike - middle of May 2000).

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 5

ANTROPOMORPHIC PNEUMATIC HAND

PEOPLE: XX and Justin Kam.

EQUIPMENT: Robix kit, Lego kit, Erector set. PC computer. Pneumatic artificial muscles, air compressor.

PROJECT STARTED: Summer 1999.

This robotic hand the following degrees of freedom.
  1. Five fingers, one degree of freedom each = 5
  2. Wrist, two degrees of freedom each = 2.
  3. Forearm = 2.
  4. Arm = 2.
  5. TOTAL: 11.


Tasks:
  1. Mechanical design. ( - end of May 2000).
  2. Software.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 6

NATURAL LANGUAGE INTERACTION WITH A ROBOT

PEOPLE: XX and Justin Kam.

EQUIPMENT: Mac with Professor program. Robix face of Kevin.

PROJECT STARTED: Summer 1999.

This robotic hand the following degrees of freedom.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 7

INTERACTIVE ROBOTIC THEATER

PEOPLE: XX and Justin Kam.

EQUIPMENT: Skeleton controlled pneumatically.

PROJECT STARTED: Spring 2000.

Control all little appliances, toys and robots. Light, sound, fireworks, smoke. Lights controlled by robots.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 8

INTERACTION AND IMMITATION

PEOPLE: XX and Justin Kam.

EQUIPMENT: Monkey in cage on the rotated chair.

PROJECT STARTED: Spring 2000.



Tasks:

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 9

PSUBOT II, OR ROBOTICS FOR HANDICAPPED

PEOPLE: Kevin Stanton.

EQUIPMENT: PSUBOT with laptop PC computer. Robotic hand. Camera.

PROJECT STARTED: 1989.

PSUBOT project was succesfully completed as a M.S. Thesis of Kevin Stanton in 1993. We hope Kevin, who is now an engineer in INTEL, will help us in building PSUBOT II.

Tasks:
  1. Make PSUBOT operational again. Instead of a large PC, a laptop will be used this time.
  2. Improve voice recognition.
  3. Improve sonar-based sensor integration.
  4. Add a INTEL camera (software of Cecilia Espinosa and Shiliang Wang).
  5. Add a OWI robotic hand.
In addition to working on PSUBOT II we will be researching and discussing use of robots for people who are handicapped, blind, mentally retarded and elderly with restricted abilities, the CareBots. Several books and papers in Rehabilitation Engineering Robotics will be read and discussed.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 10

IMAGE PROCESSING AND PATTERN RECOGNITION

PEOPLE:

EQUIPMENT:

PROJECT STARTED: 1989. OVU

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 12

MOBILE ROBOTS

PEOPLE:

EQUIPMENT: Hero robot, Micro-Mouse robot, FRED robot, and small robotic mobile platforms.

PROJECT STARTED: 1987.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 13

HIGH-LEVEL LANGUAGES AND PATH PLANNING

PEOPLE:

EQUIPMENT: LISP, PROLOG, SHRDLU, WARPLAN, Dieudonne program, Labyrinth by Mike Burns, and German students from 1994.

PROJECT STARTED: 1986.

The goal of this project is to resurrect our old mobile robot ideas in light of new software and hardware.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 14

MICROCONTROLLERS AND FPGAS

PEOPLE:

EQUIPMENT: DEC computer with Xilinx board, PC computer with Xilinx board. PC computer with Altera board.

PROJECT STARTED: 1994.

We developed several specialized computers for solving combinational problems, image processing and learning. Some of them will be now incorporated into our robotic systems. All these projects can be taken for grade credit when you take "VHDL" class.

Tasks:
  1. Design state machines for stored behaviors of the robot.
  2. Design a Convolution Processor for image processing.
  3. Design a Cube Calculus Machine for Learning and Reasoning.
  4. Design a Satisfiability Machine for Learning and Reasoning.
  5. Design a Decomposition Machine for Machine Learning.
  6. Design a Rough Set Theory Machine for Machine Learning and Problem Solving.

EXPERIMENT NUMBER 15

DSP AND IMAGE PROCESSING COMPUTERS

PEOPLE:

EQUIPMENT: PC computer with SHARP FFT board.

PROJECT STARTED: 1994.



Tasks:
  1. Design state machines for stored behaviors of the robot.