2009-10-17

A working prototype!

We are happy to announce that we now have a working prototype. Our robot can scan its surroundings and return data to a server which in turn visualizes it.



This was the try ever in creating a real map, and the results aren't very impressive. Fortunately we've already managed to improve it quite a bit from that, although there is still very much left to be done.



A simple AI controls the robot to reach around to be able to scan. Because of bugs in the current release of leJOS we have been unable to use the Compass Sensor and the as a consequence the accuracy has been suffering. This is something we hope will improve fairly soon.

Also, the AI is so far very simple, but thanks to the behavior based programming we're using, it will be relatively simple to continue working on what we have and expanding it until we some day will have an algorithm which can tackle most problems with reasonable accuracy.



The bar to the left is a control bar which shows some data from the robot and also has options for what you want to be painted. The labels are pretty self-evident, save for "Bumps" which is simply when a behavior has taken over from the default forward in a straight line. Blue indicates that the ultrasonic scanner in front has detected an obstacle and red that the robot has crashed into something with its bumper.

The arena of today was a (roughly) 3 by 1.5 meter rectangle, and you can clearly see the shape of the area, although it's far from perfect. Considering how early in the project we are we're quite satisfied. In fact, we're following our schedule pretty nicely. This far was about what we planned to be by the end of next week.

Now we will continue to work on mainly the AI, to give it an intelligent algorithm instead of the almost random we have now. Naturally we will continue to improve the other aspects as well, so stay tuned!

/Josef and Peter

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