This course is not focused on kinematics and manipulators. Rather we are looking for courses that incorporate mobile robots, their dynamics (but not as in-depth as a manipulator based kinematics course would cover), sensors and their use, path planning, behavior based robotics, etc. Compile a list of websites for the first meeting.
The function of this study is to produce:
The students taking this course will have the following characteristics:
Skills developed by this class will be:
A potential structure for the projects is team-based where there are a fixed number of roles and team members alternate through the various roles for different deliverables.
Added more universities to the Survey of Courses on Robotics and read sections of Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots by Roland Siegwart and Illah Nourbakhsh.
Found projects and textbooks for selected universities in the Survey of Courses on Robotics.
Added syllabi for selected robotics courses and continued reading Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots.
Missing from Siegwart & Nourbakhsh and from Nehmzow:
Added list of important topics. Further research of: MIT, USC, Missouri, Hopkins, and GA Tech.
Classes will be Tuesday/Thursday, so the syllabus will have to focus on longer lessons.
Worked on rough syllabus.
Collected labs and homeworks.
Begin designing a series of incrimental projects to build toward a final project and help a student develop the skills of:
The nature of the project is guided by the types of sensors avialable in the robotics platform used. One of the more attractive platforms for beginners is to use legos with the Handy Board from MIT. Types of sensors available to lego robots:
Other Lego-based challenges have included:
One of the goals for the class project is to emphasize the development of programs in simulation and then transition those skills over to actual robot construction. So far as robotics simulators there are two primary options:
In order to reduce the amount of additional information that the students, who operate in Microsoft Visual Studio for their other classes, the choice was made to use Robotics Studio. The question is then which platform to target.
The introduction goes on a great deal about the REST style composable architecture and includes the sentence, "Remotely connected scenarios enable you to communicate from a PC to the robot through a serial port, Bluetooth®istered;, 802.11, or RF. Programs can also execute natively on PC-based robots running Microsoft Windows, enabling fully autonomous operation." An entry at Coding4Fun and MSDN seem to confirm that Robotics Studio requires Windows to run and integrates with different platforms only via remote control.
Need to get these links contextualized:
| Handyboard | Lego NXT | VEX | JStik | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Motorola 68HC11 (8-bit) | ARM 7 (32-bit) | PIC 18F8520 (16-bit) | aJile Systems aJ-100 |
| RAM | 32K | 64K | 32K | 2M |
| Inputs |
|
4 | 16 | |
| Outputs | 4 | 3 | ||
| Programming Language |
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Ranked potential readings.
Revised syllabus and added project options. Also generated comparison table for Lego Mindstorms NXT and VEX Robotics Design System.
| Lego Mindstorms NXT | VEX Robotics Design System | |
|---|---|---|
| Base Kit Price (04/07/2008) | $250 | $300 |
| Parts in Kit | 577 | 500 |
| Sensors in Kit |
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| Additional Sensors from Manufacturer |
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| Additional Sensors from Third-Parties |
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| Homebrew Sensors |
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Generated descriptions for first three assignments. Updated syllabus and lecture topics.
Added more assignments.