Day 5 (Friday, June 11, 2010)

A video compilation of workshop photos and team presentations is on Youtube. (Click here for the video).

We had a very successful demonstration session with parents today. Students showed the videos of the patterns they made with the robots in Webots, then they showed the robots make a pattern with the Sharpie pen attached to them. Finally, we had a tour of the C-MANTIC research lab where the students RC-ed the Explorer robots and saw a demonstration of waypoint navigation with the Corobot robot. Overall, the workshop was a very challenging, entertaining, and most importantly learning experience for us all. Videos and photos of the final day's event are given below:

Day 4 (Thursday, June 10, 2010)

Reminder: ON FRIDAY, DO NOT FORGET TO WEAR OR AT LEAST BRING (EVEN IF THE SIZE DOESN'T FIT) THE T-SHIRT YOU RECEIVED AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WORKSHOP.

Prologue: Today's plan is to work on some robot letter patterns with e-pucks...both on Webots and with the actual e-pucks. This work should highlight how simulating the robots in software first, takes out a lot of guess work from programming the robot hardware.

The workshop got off to a regular start. Today we looked at using Webots to control the e-puck robot. We attached a pen to the epuck robot inside Webots so that it could make a pattern on the floor. We went through the basic steps that lets a robot go in a straight line - forwards or backwards, make an angular turn and make a circular turn. We then used the robot to draw the letters corresponding to the name of each student team - SPIRIT, NAO, AIBO and S(ilver) Fox. Every team made a movie of their robot's pattern making, which will be shown to the parents at the meeting tomorrow. We will also show different patterns that robots can make at tomorrow's parent meeting.

Day 3 (Wednesday, June 9, 2010)

Zachary's class on programming e-puck robots

Had a couple of hiccups at the start of class today. The loaner laptop we had as the instructor laptop, started acting up. It would not connect to the ICD2 or ICD3 programmer that hooks up to the e-puck. Then, its keyboard failed. We hooked up a USB keyboard, but that too wouldn't work...application windows would just close as soon as we hit a key on the keyboard. Lukcily, we got this figured out promptly. The students' laptops were working fine and Zach was able to program the robots for each of the students.





The first program we wrote and ran on the e-puck was to make it blink LEDs in a pattern. Next order of the day was to get the e-puck robots to move. A small program was given to everyone for doing this. Then, we attached a sharpie pen to each robot. This made each robot into a line-tracer robot. First, we made straight line patterns. We really wish we had more ICD programmers so that things could move faster. But the groups did exceptionally well, patiently sharing the single ICD2 programmer between themselves.

Then, each group started making there own robot tracer patterns. All these patterns were fascinating. Here are a couple of photographs with the patterns that some groups made.

Day 2 (Tuesday, June 8, 2010)

Today we completed building our first robot, Mybot within the Webots simulation environment. This is what it looks like. We had a few minor hiccups while implementing the robot, mainly small typos while entering the data, but finally everything worked out during the first half of the class. To the right is a picture of what the robot looks like.

In the second half, we looked at how to build intelligence into robots, using the controller of the robot. We learned that the contoller takes the inputs from the robot's sensors, processes this data and uses the processed data to 'move' the actuators of the robot. We looked at a very simple controller for the robot shown above that lets it avoid obstacles and walls.

We then used the e-puck robot's model inside Webots and worked on two more controllers - one spins the e-puck around, the second one lets the e-puck blink its eight LEDs one after another.

In tomorrow's class, Zachary will talk about how to program simple controllers on the e-puck robot. We will evidently use the e-puck robots for doing this. We have only one programmer device called ICD3 that connects a computer to an e-puck while programming it. So, please be patient while each group does the programming one after the other.

Day 1 (Monday, June 7, 2010)

Our workshop got off to a brisk start today morning. We have an eclectic group ranging from middle school to high-school students interested in using robotics for diverse fields like medicine, agriculture, entertainment, etc. After a quick round of introductions, we had an overview of robotics' basics. We saw video demos of different types of robots - wheeled, biped, quadruped, tracked, aerial, modular, etc. We also watched some multi-robot systems in action, specifically for unmanned rescue. While watching robots play soccer, we realized the challenges in programming robots. Just before the half-way break, we RC-ed the i-sobot robot and made it do different things. I-sobot has very limited autonomy and we decided to look at autonomous robots in the second half of the class.

In the second half, we looked at the e-puck mini-robot. We discussed what sensors and actuators it had and also had a brief discussion on designing the controller (intelligent software) of a robot. We then started working on the Webots simulation software trying to build our first robot. We have gotten to building and placing obstacles in the environment and creating the skeleton of the first robot. We will continue with building the rest of the robot on Day 2.

Reminder to participants: Make sure to return your Friday lunch reservation forms signed by your parents.

Slides for day 2 of the workshop are posted here

Day 0 (Sunday, June 6, 2010)

We seem to be all set to go. Computers have been set up, software installed, robots tested. Thanks to all those who helped, especially the folks at IST support for their help in setting up computers, and to all those who helped with last minute scheduling changes. The workshop is at its full capacity of ten students and we are all very excited about the week ahead. Classes start tomorrow (Monday, June 7) at 9 AM in PKI 157. Pre-class assembly at PKI Atrium starting from 8 AM.

Presentation slides from Monday, June 7 are here