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Towards Autonomous Combat
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marto
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Joined: 08 Jul 2004
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Location: Brisbane, QLD


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Progress:

Well two steps forward one step back. Think I killed my modded TX's controller board. Hopefully the actual transmitter is good.

I ordered a scope which should make my life a lot easier. Well other than the $450 hole in my pocket.

Checked out the ROS node for the wiimote its very easy to access the IR data. Just not sure what the visible area will be. Might need to be mounted 2m above arena which could pose a problem.

Might get time to do some more on it tomorrow. Depends how much I want to avoid uni work.

Next aim is to use one of the new teensy chips I got to drive some IR leds. Shouldn't take very long.....
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Steven Martin
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Post Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:06 am 
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marto
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Update Again:

Transmitter Board appears to be functional it binds to a RX I stole out of one of my other robots. Dunno if my code is working correctly. ETA on DSO is 3-4 Days so then can actually see woo.

Worked out serial comms in python. Have used it before to send strings but not data. Think I got that sorted now. I can send a command to the micro and get a response. This can be incorporated pretty easily into ROS but really need to get microcontroller working so I can be sure its working.

On the microcontroller side I really need to setup timer/interrupt based sending of signals. Not hard to do I am just lazy. Once again waiting on scope to make sure signals are working properly.

On the wiimote tracking side of things. It turns out that IR Leds and IR receivers look exactly the same. So it turns out I wired up receivers instead of LEDs. So its not working atm, have to unsolder them and swap them out.

Next on the list is to read in the wiimote data into python. Still not sure about the wiimote. Its viewing angle is pretty narrow. I might switch it for a webcam + IR filter with image processing at a later stage but for now its an easy solution.

Steve
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Steven Martin
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Post Sun Aug 15, 2010 1:40 pm 
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marto
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Well would like to get back to this sometime. Is anyone else interested in contributing since my spare time seems to have completely disappeared?
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Post Wed Oct 06, 2010 10:37 pm 
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marto
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Had a bit more of a play with this last week. I bought a logitech pro 9000 and got the SSL-vision software up and running for it. Still needs a lot of supporting work to get it all running but I can get the robots position and I can send it commands to drive from my PC so the backbone is there in theory......

Steve
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Post Sun Nov 07, 2010 6:17 pm 
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chris...



Joined: 20 Oct 2010
Posts: 28


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What kind of help do you need?
Can you supply a simple list...
I can do generic programming with most of the common languages and tool kits on linux

Post Fri Nov 26, 2010 4:00 pm 
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marto
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So there is two key parts to facilitating this.

1. Control of the robot
2. Tracking of the robot
3. Path planning maybe we can claim a bit of AI here so they sound more technical.

I pretty much got 1 and 3 covered. 2. is the big one.

There is quite a few options. So there is the SSL-vision package which I now have accepting input from Logitech Pro 9000. (no tracking done yet) And also a few things in ROS. There is the AR pose library which tracks special markers. And there is also Point cloud tools. The point clouds generated from the Kinect are pretty awesome so you could do some 3D recognition of the robots and their pose without having to attach any markers.
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Post Mon Nov 29, 2010 10:40 pm 
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chris...



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My opinion, mostly to do with the difference between something like robosoccer and robowars is that robowars is war. With no markers it will be more complex to initially implement but they wont get damaged, break off or need to be added
I can see a few problems with kinect, its extremely laggy, has a limited operting range, a narrow field of view and costs a bit.
Personally I wouldn't bother with markers or kinect, but that's my opinion, just remember what ever gets implemented would most likely become a standard or a base and mostly likely be used by most.
Using ssl vision all robots will need a constant unobstructed view of the markers.

ROS is interesting contains a lot of re-usable code, no point in writing something again that already been written.

Their are two solutions for tracking
1. Something like ssl vision where all robots know the absolute position of themselves and all other robots, simply solution
2. Each robot works out the angle and distance of the other robots
The second option will be better and allow self contained automation

http://robotbox.net/blog/gallamine/open-lidar-project-hack-neato-xv-11-lidar-200-bounty


Last edited by chris... on Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:02 am; edited 1 time in total

Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:30 am 
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Valen
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kinect could make for interesting tracking platform
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Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 8:44 am 
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marto
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I have been playing with kinect data and have noticed very limited lag in the visualization of the raw data. So I don't think that should be an issue however I will acknowledge that there is a very good chance of there becoming a bottleneck in the processing. "The sensor has an angular field of view of 57° horizontally and a 43° vertically" this is a bit wider than you standard webcam IIRC.

Onboard solution sounds like a good idea but it has been tried and really isn't. As you said it is war and onboard systems are not trivial and have to be built to military grade specs. I am not sure what exact sort of sensors you see for an onboard solution (I think IR beacons have been used in the past) but I doubt you would be able to make a reliable, robust complete system for the cost of a Kinect or webcam tracking system.

An ideal solution would probably be running it on a low cost webcam with image processing. But I don' t know how to implement this. I don't think it would be very hard with the tools in openCV these days. Just do background subtraction then track the the blobs, however Identifying the robots is the tricky part, particularly when the get close to each other. This is why SSL-vision with the markers is easy.

Not saying its ideal but nobody is building autonomous bots yet so if it catches on then we could look for ideal. Maybe get some people working on our own implementation but I am looking for just up and running.

So really what I would like is SSL running with an interface to ROS in the short term. Maybe kinect and point cloud blob tracking of robots but there is still a long way to go.

Steve
Steve
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Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:03 am 
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chris...



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Does kinect work from near to far?
Does kinect work 360 degress?
You'll also need to read the USB data from the kinect
What happens when kinect becomes obsolete?
It wont work to well on the smaller robots

Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:10 am 
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marto
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http://www.ros.org/wiki/kinect
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Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:12 am 
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chris...



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quote:
Originally posted by marto:

So really what I would like is SSL running with an interface to ROS in the short term.


most likely the simplest solution to get a working feedback loop

How do you plan to decode the kinect information into usable data?

If you use a kinect best option would be to use some kind of wireless usb tether. If not you'll have to get a usb master to read the data, process it and wirelessly transmit it. Either trough some custom device or easiest would be an on borad system like embedded arm, gumstix type board

Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:17 am 
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marto
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Ahh. I am talking about running everything offboard. You place kinect above the robots and it plugs into PC. Then you use the PC with an interface to an RC transmitter to control the robots.

All control is done on the computers. Robots can essentially remain unmodified from its RC state.
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Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:32 am 
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marto
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Also if anyone is still living in windows land could the give Roborealm a go to see if that would be suitable?
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Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:41 am 
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chris...



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So you are literally leaving everything the same but replacing the person with a computer... the long way around for automation.
The kinect will still need a wide enough field of view of the entire battle area and also have sufficent depth. Where do you plan to put it?
Also again, I have no kinect
It should work with just a data stream, it should be possible to feed this into ROS for processing and get suitable output.
Could you send me some kinect stream data

Post Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:19 am 
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