In this VI Shots video taken at Robodevelopment 2007, we talk with Paul Roberts, a developer with Microsoft Robotics Studio. Yes, it’s similar to LabVIEW and it can be used as a general purpose language.
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Tag Archive for 'Robotics'
In this VI Shots video taken at Robodevelopment 2007, we talk with Paul Roberts, a developer with Microsoft Robotics Studio. Yes, it’s similar to LabVIEW and it can be used as a general purpose language.
I just got wind of this cool NXT website through one of the FLL group lists I’m subscribed to, nxtprograms.com.
Dave Parker, the founder of nxtprograms.com says about his new site:
I started this web site in response to feedback that I have heard over and over from parents of kids at our school: They got an NXT set for Christmas, had fun building the one or two sample robots, and now they are having trouble figuring out what to do with it, either due to lack of building experience (especially with the studless NXT style parts), lack of knowledge of any programming, or simply a lack of ideas that are fun but simple enough to do. Lack of programming knowledge, in particular, is a big barrier to most kids and severely limits what you can do with your NXT set. I have also found that most kids don’t have the patience to learn any programming lesson-style during their free time, so this site takes a different approach. There are no programming lessons, but instead there are a variety of free, fully commented sample programs that go along with various fun projects that the kids can simply download and use as it, then perhaps some will be motivated to learn more about how they work by studying the programs. Those of us who have studied any programming know that many times the best way to learn it is by seeing concrete examples. In addition, by following the building instructions for the projects, the kids will also learn various ways of building with the NXT parts.
I have to agree that figuring out where to go next after you have built the included bots is a challenge. My favorite part about the site is the super crisp detailed pictures of the assembly process. All programs are included on the site for free. As an added bonus, at the end of the project page there is a challenges section that gives you ideas on how to expand the project.
It’s great to see LabVIEW once again at the forefront of autonomous robotics. This time with an impressive finish by Virginia Tech team Victor Tango and their vehicle named Odin.
Virginia Tech, along with TORC Technologies, won the $500,000 third place prize last weekend at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge. In a close race with teams from Carnegie Mellon and Stanford universities, the Virginia Tech team used National Instruments LabVIEW software and CompactRIO hardware in its vehicle. Virginia Tech’s team, Victor Tango, was one of only six robotic teams to finish the 55-mile DARPA Urban Challenge course.
“National Instruments congratulates team Victor Tango on its remarkable achievement,” said Ray Almgren, NI vice president of academic relations. “Team Victor Tango is a great example of how domain experts, rather than computer scientists, use NI LabVIEW graphical system design to quickly design, prototype and deploy sophisticated robotic designs. NI is proud to offer technologies for applications in this exciting and growing field of mobile robotics.”
As part of the competition, TORC Technologies created a set of LabVIEW tools for Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS), an autonomous ground vehicle standard for passing messages and status information between various vehicle subsystems. LabVIEW running on a separate Microsoft Windows Server performed image processing and path planning. The team integrated an NI touch panel with the vehicle dashboard to select appropriate modes of operation.
“This exceptional team of Virginia Tech graduate and undergraduate students has been a true joy to work with, as they share the same passion for robotics as TORC,” said Michael Fleming, president of TORC Technologies. “With LabVIEW, the team implemented parallel processing of high-end vision algorithms running on two quad-core servers that perform the primary perception in our vehicle. The ability of LabVIEW to automatically multithread our application, in addition to the optimizations we performed in the language itself, drastically reduced our development time.”
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Karl Muecke was at the Robo Development conference 2007 showing of DARwIn. DARwIn stands for Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence. Karl was visiting from RoMeLa, the robotics and mechanisms laboratory at Virginia Tech. RoMeLa does a lot of research into robotics locomotion strategies.
The development of DARwIn started back in 2005 with version 1 and the current incarnation is at version 2b. DARwIn runs LabVIEW Real Time on a PC104 board and RoMeLa has decided to standardize on this platform for all their robots.
LabVIEW controls DARwIn’s motion over RS-485 and can read joint positions on the same serial network from the servo motors’ built-in potentiometers. While the robot is walking or moving, a rate gyro with acceleration and orientation information communicates with LabVIEW over an RS-232 serial connection so that the program modifies the walking gait to effectively balance the robot in real time.
Karl told VI Shots that RoMeLa is planning on evolving DARwIn hardware so it can be sold at the consumer level at a lower cost. I think this would be very cool.
View video in Quicktime format
Hanson Robotics has done some incredible work in the area of robotic human facial expression emulation. Check out their website which has several videos of their handiwork. David Hanson is a true pioneer and visionary in this field. With the invention of Frubber and special AI interaction algorithms, he is helping build the future of robots that can interact with the human population in a more natural fashion. I can’t help but compare him to doctor Noonien Soong who designed Data from Star Trek the next generation. A bit of a stretch, I admit, but listening to him speak in an interview at the 2007 Robo Development conference about robots that can “truly love” makes me wonder.
Hanson robotics is now getting into the consumer market with a creation they call Zeno. Zeno will be available in 2009 for the price range of $200-$300. Zeno is a robotic companion that can interact with you on an entirely new level that has not been seen before. It’s considered a toy targeting kids but I can see this being purchased by gadget craving adults as well.
Hanson Robotics is collaborating with Massive Software on this one. Massive has built their business on artificial intelligence algorithms used in computer animation for simulating crowds. They started off by developing the computer animation for Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings battle sequences.
The vision and decision making components in Massive Software give Zeno the ability to navigate, make facial expressions, and move his body based on what he sees in his physical environment. The video coming in from Zeno’s eye camera is fed into the Massive part of his brain so that he can move appropriately and respond emotionally to what is going on around him.
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