In this video taken at Robo Business 2008, Jim Lynch gives us an overview of the latest iRobot robot called the Looj.
Resources:
In this video taken at Robo Business 2008, Jim Lynch gives us an overview of the latest iRobot robot called the Looj.
Resources:
This video highlights the new Compact RIO hardware that will be used as the controller for the 2009 FIRST robotics competition in the FRC category.
National Instruments had a booth close to the pits at the 2008 FRC final championship in Atlanta. They built several robots demonstrating the capabilities of the new controller. One of the robots is shown here and the various components of the control hardware are explained.
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“FIRST has selected the National Instruments CompactRIO embedded control platform as its next-generation FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) robot controller. With this platform, high school students will create advanced robots starting in the 2009 FIRST season. Students can program their robots based on CompactRIO in either NI LabVIEW graphical programming software or the ANSI C language.” National Instruments announced at the 08′ FIRST Championship in Atlanta, Georgia today.
I’m here in Atlanta today covering the FIRST Championship. Todays announcement from National Instruments and FIRST is breathing new life into the successful robotics competition. Everyone is excited about using the new hardware and even more excited at the chance to use LabVIEW as the programming language. I want to stress that this is a multimillion dollar donation of materials over the next five years to FIRST to provide the CompactRIO system to participating teams. Several key technology suppliers have collaborated with NI to provide the components required to build the CompactRIO control system, including Analog Devices, Boston Engineering, ChipX, Dove Electronics, Freescale, MSI, Texas Instruments, TTI, Westak, Wind River, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and Xilinx.
Quoting NI’s official press release:
“Our goal is to have a FIRST team in every high school and to change the culture in our communities to celebrate excellence in science and engineering the same way we celebrate sports,” said Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST and president of DEKA Research & Development Corporation. “It’s the support of partners like NI that is helping FIRST make that goal a reality.”
FIRST engages and encourages students to discover the excitement of science and engineering through a range of robotics competitions including Junior FIRST LEGO League, FIRST LEGO League, FIRST Technical Challenge and FIRST Robotics Competition. With the partnership between NI, LEGO and FIRST, 150,000 students in all FIRST competitions will have access to a progressive programming platform starting with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT-G and continuing through NI LabVIEW. This robotics software continuum introduces students to age-appropriate technology in an exciting, hands-on learning environment.
“We’ve chosen to partner with FIRST because we believe the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) program will have a substantial impact in creating more scientists and engineers” said Ray Almgren, vice president of Academic Relations at National Instruments. “By adding CompactRIO and LabVIEW to the robotics platform of their competition, FIRST will increase the technical capabilities of the teams’ robots while making the programming more accessible to a much larger and diverse group of students because of the ease of use and productivity in NI LabVIEW graphical programming.”
I’ve taken many cool videos of the new hardware already being used in several robots that NI put together to demonstrate the power of the new tools. I promise to post the videos as soon as they become available. :-)
The new CompactRIO is labeled the NI cRIO-FRC with the following specs:
· 400 MHz PPC
· 64 MB System Memory
· 128 MB Nonvolatile Storage
· 2M Gate FPGA
· 8 C Series I/O Ports
· RS-232 Serial Port
· Dual 10/100 Ethernet Ports
· VxWorks Operating System
· 19V-30V Input Voltage
You can plug in several modules to the cRIO base but the ones supplied are:
NI 9401: 8 Ch, 5 V/TTL High-Speed Bidirectional Digital I/O Module
· 8-channel, 100 ns ultrahigh-speed digital I/O
· 5 V/TTL, sinking/sourcing digital I/O
· -40 to 70 °C operating range
· Industry-standard 25-pin D-Sub connector
· Hot-swappable operation
· Bidirectional, configurable by nibble (4 bits)
NI 9201: 8-Ch, ±10 V, 500 kS/s, 12-Bit Analog Input Module, C Series
· 8 analog inputs, ±10 V input range
· 500 kS/s aggregate sampling rate
· 12-bit resolution, single-ended inputs, screw terminal or D-Sub connectors
· Hot-swappable operation; overvoltage protection; isolation
· NIST-traceable calibration
· -40 to 70 °C operating range
NI 9472: 8-Channel 24 V Logic, 100 µs, Sourcing Digital Output Module
· 8-channel, 100 µs digital output
· D-Sub or screw-terminal connector options
· 6 to 30 V range, sourcing digital output
· -40 to 70 °C operating range
· Hot-swappable operation
· Extreme industrial certifications/ratings
In addition to the cRIO, there are several other breakout boards and modules included. More details of the hardware with photos can be found here:
FRC Control System - Technical Specs
In order to program the robot, students will have a choice of C or LabVIEW. On the C side students will be able to use software developed by WPI. An excerpt from WPI’s press release:
Teams using C/C++ will base their code on a programming library developed by Brad Miller, associate director of WPI’s Robotics Resource Center, and a team of WPI faculty members and students. Called WPILib, the library includes a wide range of modules that will enable high school students to easily and quickly develop programs that take full advantage of the enhanced power of the new control system. Miller says WPILib will be released as an open-source software project, giving teams the ability to develop their own code and share it with the FIRST community.
On the LabVIEW side there will be a special palette of VIs that will assist students to help them quickly get up and running with the motion control and sensors of their robot. What exactly these VIs do has not been officially announced yet however NI has a hands-on demonstration here of LabVIEW and the new VIs. Students have been streaming here to try it out (and get a free t-shirt of course). I saw several students who have never even seen LabVIEW before literally grab the mouse lay down some code and start moving motors via a joystick in like 5 minutes! I have no doubt that LabVIEW will be a huge success with the new FRC teams.
Keep reading future posts as I bring more news and video from the FRC competition and also FTC and FLL.
Question for my readers who use LabVIEW professionally. Does this announcement motivate you to become a mentor in your local FRC team?
Additional Resources:
Out of the many submissions to the NIWeek 2008 demo contest, this year we have yet another console game meets LabVIEW. Texas A&M students: Dave Buckner, Mitchell Jefferis, Vinny LaPenna, and Michael Voth are working on Slashbot.
From their blog:
To put it simply, we are designing a robot that is capable of autonomously playing a video game, the wildly popular Guitar Hero series. In the game a player attempts to simulate playing songs as color-coded buttons corresponding to notes scroll on the screen. A sensing and computation system will analyze the NTSC video signal as it is output from a PlayStation2 gaming system. The buttons a player is asked to press will be detected and an appropriate control signal will be sent to the robot. The robot will consist of six solenoid actuators, one for each colored button and one for the “strum” bar.
Resources mentioned:
Someone at NI just put up a slew of funny LabVIEW related videos on Youtube. I assume these are interns. Check them out below.
PS: Can you spot the Dr. T cameo?
Anybots just released a new video of the next version of Dexter. Dexter is a biped teleoperated robot created by the Mountain View, CA based company.
Dexter’s walking is performed autonomously and is a demonstration of the type of hybrid robot that Anybots is working on. It will mainly be teleoperated but certain tasks will be automated such as walking.
Here’s a VI Shots video of the Anybots team during last years Robodevelopment conference:
Addition resources:
I was the first to mentioned in a previous post about the great NXT website called nxtprograms.com. One distinct feature of the site is the crystal clear photos of the robots. Well, you too can take great photos of your own creations. The creator of the site has put up some tutorials on how to take photos just like the ones on the site.
Website: How to Take Good Photos of LEGOs
NXT-G Online is software that allows you to program a virtual Lego Mindstorms NXT. Are you a school that doesn’t have enough cash for an NXT hardware set. No fear, this virtual software actually lets you program in NXT-G and download to a virtual NXT brain. Then you can execute the code and see it in virtual action.
To help better understand what is going on in the video, here is the sequence of chronologically events:
- A challenge was selected - a video that came up introduced the challenge.
- The simulated NXT-G programming environment was opened
- Wrote some code (4 motor blocks were dragged onto the palette, and each was set at a different power level).
- Downloaded the NXT-G program to the virtual NXT robot, which automatically opened the virtual environment.
- The robot was moved to where we wanted it to start.
- The virtual NXT brick was opened and we ran the program that was just created. The robot moved accordingly.
Note that the release version of NXT-G Online also has the ability select different sensors and motors for the virtual robot after which you can go back and change your code to make use of your modifications.
VI Shots talked with Maria Bualat from the NASA Ames Research Intelligent Robotics Group. Gigapan.org is a website where people can upload super high resolution panoramic photos. These photos were taken by a prototype motorized automated pan and tilt camera mount that figures out the exact positions of all the multiple snapshots required to make an awesome high resolution panorama. Gigapan (gigapixel panorama) was developed by Carnegie Mellon University in collaboration with NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, with support from Google. The price for this technology seems within reach of the consumer market at $279.
At the end of the video, Maria talks a little about here background and the K10 robotics platform which NASA used in the Canadian Arctic recently. The robots, K10 Black and K10 Red, carried 3-D laser scanners and ground-penetrating radar. The two NASA robots surveyed a rocky, isolated polar desert within a crater in the Arctic Circle. The study helped scientists learn how robots could evaluate potential outposts on the moon or Mars.
Resources mentioned in video:
- Intelligent Robotics group
- NASA Robots Practice Moon Survey in the Arctic Circle (Haughton Crater Site Survey Field Test)
- Gigapan Website
- Gigapan Hardware
- Quicktime Version of Video
Additional Video:
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