Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Execution of programs for both robots


Hi everyone!

As Arturo said, hope you are all influenza free ;).

I just figured out how to make both robots run programs. I had to modify the lab2piso.cfg file (I created a lab2piso.2.cfg file) and defined two different models, one for each robot with two specific ports like so:

driver
(
name "vfh"
provides ["6665:position2d:1"]
requires ["position2d:0" "laser:0" ]
)

# robot2
driver
(
name "stage"
provides ["6666:position2d:0" "6666:laser:0" "6666:sonar:0" ]
model "robot2"
)
driver
(
name "vfh"
provides ["6666:position2d:1"]
requires ["position2d:0" "laser:0" ]
)

Then, I looked into laserobstacleavoid's code and noted the library "args.h". Inside this library there is a function called print_usage which tells the parameters you can provide to the program. In this way, according to the ports I determined for each robot I execute the laserobstacleavoid program for one of them in this way: ./laserobstacleavoid -p 6666 and for the one whose port is 6665 I executed the example we created previously in this way: ./example.0.1.2.

In the case of example.0.1.2 it is automatically executed in te robot whose port is 6665, however if I add the "args.h" library I suppose I could execute it for both robots using -p.

Here is a screenshot of the two robots navigating in the lab2piso.world.
I hope the epidemic issue ends soon enough, meanwhile take lots of care.

See you!
Laura

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Holy Influenza Week

Hey everyone
I hope and sincerely hope you´re all doing well and Influenza free. Yes, this epidemic thing has hit us and it seems it is a huge thing. Anyway, it is terrible news for me since my computer has died completely, I can´t work with it anymore so I don´t know if I´m gonna be able of doing something related to the tasks we have assigned. But I would like to know which they are in order to do some research and also start reading my great C++ for dummies book jeje. Ahm I think that would be all. Take care.Hope I´ll see you soon.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Research

I start my research about REPAST :) :P


Cheers,

Carlos L.

Influenza attacks!

Hi everyone,

The influenza has become a greater risk, so the Goverment decided to suspend school activities for the next week, so we'll not be seeing that soon. I think it's more dangerous than it seems.

Now I'm gonna be investigating about JADE, so when we return we can put in practice that interesting work.

Regards,
Luis

:)

Hi,

Just like Laura wants, I want to know the new task. In Mexico the problems with the influenza virus still the same. Maybe we can't go to school the next week. I can move in with the SW stuff.

Cheers,

:)

Carlos Lozano

Next task

Hi everyone!

Hope you are doing well. I wanted to know what is the next task we should be fullfilling or if there is any recommendation you could give us on which topics to investigate on. I have been looking at the C++ libraries in order to understand how to make a program in which the two robots interact.

Since we won't be seeing each other this next week I was also thinking if we are going to have a meeting through Skype or Google chat.

Take care and try to keep yourselves away from crowded places.

Regards!

Friday, April 24, 2009

Advance Revision

1st Advance Revision for Robotics collaboration CEM-DFKI

 

  1. List of sensors and actuators.- Sick laser, Gripper, two motors, 4 wheels for the outdoors robot. For the indoors robot we located the sonar, sick laser, 2 motors and 3 wheels.
  2. Check Aria demo in the outdoors Pioneer.- The demo worked correctly and I was able to teleoperate the robot, however we could not put the sick laser to work properly.
  3. Installation of Ubuntu and Player/Stage. Since some time ago I have been having troubles with my computer, however I was able to successfully install ubuntu, and then player and stage.
  4. I test the installation by running one of the cfg files that are already in the database of stage. There I checked functionality of playerjoy which makes it possible to teleoperate the robot. Also I used playerv which enables you to activate and see any of the tools, that the robot counts with, sonar, sick laser, etc.
  5. Execution of   the laserobstacleavoid program in several .cfg files such as simple.cfg and autolab.cfg. This program allows a robot to avoid obstacles through laser readings.

The program runs in simulation with no problem although I don´t quite understand it´s content.

  1. Compilation and execution of the example 0 program. Analysis of its code and familiarization with the concepts of proxy (laser and sonar mainly). Compilation of programs is done with the next command in the terminal:

g++ -o example0 `pkg-config --cflags playerc++` example0.cc `pkg-config --libs playerc++`

 

Changed the program for it to have a laser and a sonar for the robot, and also modified the speed of the robot and some other parameters in order to understand the program.

 

  1. Creation world and cfg files that simulate the laboratories in which we work and creation of a program with two robots (simulating the Pioneer robots we are working with) that can navigate in this world.

First we researched some information of how a .cfg and a .world files are structured and analyze the information they handle. We discovered that the cfg files load drivers and libraries and calls the world file in which all the information of the environment in which the robot is going to interact is defined in. We saw that by changing the .png file (image bit map) in the world file, we would practically have the world file for our robot to interact. Later we tried to know how other things are defined or created in such files, and we were able to put a second robot in the file. Anyway so far we haven´t  been able to make both robots to run a program since we can only get one to obey but we are working on that and hopefully will see them interact any time soon.

Our schedule!

Hi,

These are the hours that we can work together. The schedule is in this way because the major we have and the course matching.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
  • 12:00 - 14:00 hrs.
Tuesday and Thursday.
  • 10:30 - 11:30 hrs and after 18:00 hrs
We hope the other members of the team share their schedule and plan a way to be in touch.

With the govenment announcement that there is no school for tomorrow (because of the increase of influensa cases in the city) we can't go further about to charge the batteries. Luis and me, planned to start charging the batteries in the morning and come back after our courses, but now it's impossible. We'll charge the bateries in the mondajavascript:void(0)y's morning.

Regards,
Luis and me(Carlos L.)

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Primera evaluación

Colaboración en robótica CEM-DFKI

Evaluacion en conjunto

  1. Puntos favorables (ventajas).

    El equipo ha demostrado que tiene habilidades y un gran deseo para aprender acerca de la Robótica móvil sin contar con ningún incentivo académico totalmente resuelto. El equipo posee mucha energía que va muy bien acompañada por su corta edad y ansias por ser personas profesionales y competitivas a nivel internacional. Además, dentro del equipo se cuenta con personas muy valiosas provenientes de diferentes áreas del conocimiento que es una característica clave para todo aquel que quiera dedicarse a la Robótica.

  1. Puntos negativos (desventajas).

    En el equipo de trabajo las individualidades no fortalecen las debilidades o carencias de los demás en cuestiones de conocimiento y tiempo. Por el momento, tampoco se ha demostrado tener la confianza ni la organización para contrarrestar la falta de tiempo o la deficiencia del trabajo colaborativo dadas las habilidades profesionales de cada uno de los integrantes. Por lo cual, tampoco se comparte el conocimiento ni el éxito y sincronía con los objetivos de trabajo. Finalmente, los integrantes tampoco muestran una organización individual suficientemente apta para contrarrestar las situaciones adversas como lo son: los procesos administrativos, carga de trabajo o la falta de material.

  1. Conclusiones hasta la primera evaluación.

    Los alumnos están aprendiendo los fundamentos de la Robótica móvil por medio de la herramienta Player/Stage y el robot Pioneer. El desarrollo hasta el momento ha sido de forma satisfactoria, extracurricular y durante los tiempo personales de cada uno de los integrantes. Algunos de los integrantes muestran un gran interés y curiosidad propios de una carrera de vida en la investigación como lo son Laura y Carlos González.

  1. Recomendaciones o acciones a tomar.

    El proyecto está dirigido a desarrollar habilidades para la programación de agentes robóticos con lo cual se requerirá del uso de la programación en C++ para su realización. Los integrantes con más experiencia deberán de protagonizar un interés especial por ejemplificar la codificación base de los programas para los integrantes con menor grado de experiencia. Además de que la forma de trabajo, requiere que la comunicación sea obligatoriamente por medio del Blog, aunque al momento no todos los integrantes lo han sabido desarrollar completamente. Se implementará el uso de un servidor de concurrencias simple (SVN) para servir como contenedor de recursos y se requerirá el auto aprendizaje (guiado) del mismo.

Carlos' First Revision Executive Summary

begin:vcard
fn;quoted-printable:Carlos Gonz=C3=A1lez Avelino
n;quoted-printable:Gonz=C3=A1lez Avelino;Carlos
email;internet:carlosgoac1404@gmail.com
version:2.1
end:vcard

Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey

Campus Estado de México

Carlos González Avelino

First Revision of the CEM-DFKI Project

The work done by myself can be divided into two parts: Software and
Hardware. Having a little more involvement with the Hardware part.

Hardware:

*

Reassembly of both the interiors and exteriors robots.

o

We understood a little bit more about the interiors robot
hardware architecture which was the most disassembled one,
the exteriors robot just had some cables disconected and the
laser but should quite similar.

o

We found a problem in the laser because the USB port doesn't
seem to work, we assume it's a software problem because we
tested the cables and they worked fine, we just hope the
actual laser works fine. On the other hand we were able to
get Internet connectivity so we can do the image of the HD
by networking means before we try some other stuff on it.

o

We found some (perhaps) hardware desigin flaws at least on
the exteriors robot because of the batteries. They need to
be inside and charged before the robot can be turned on
(obviously) but also when plugged to an energy source which
is kind of weird. Speaking about the batteries, we have some
problems because we don't decide in a way to get them all
charged. It might be two at a time (because we have two
chargers) or 4 at a time which would be a lot better to
avoid different charge on them and to damage either the
robots or the batteries which would represent a significant
extra inversion. Another possibility is the use of a power
source which is at the lab to get the four batteries to be
charging at the same time but we still need to figure out if
the source is working properly.


Software:

*

Installation of Player and Stage.

o

Well, I haven't been able to completely install the software
because....noone knows why. It should be working but I'm
going to take another aproach suggested by Renato and I hope
I can get it to work ASAP so I can catch up with the others.

Tasks

Carlos David Lozano Torres
Luis Arturo López Malo Walls

The following document describes the things we do for this project. For this project, we must follow some task. The task are these:
1. Identify the actuators.
2. Check Pioneer functionality with ARIA DEMO.
3. Install Player/Stage.
4. Getting related with Stage.
5. Program a Player Client Proxy.
6. Modeling the environment for Stage simulator.
7. Map control for Stage simulator.
8. Create map for Player/Stage.

For each activity, we(Luis and Carlos L.) work as a team. The first task, identify the actuators, is pretty simple. We go to the lab and view the “pioneers”. After we verify the sensor and the actuators. For the second task, we have troubles with the “pioneers” and all the hardware stuff. But at last we were able to view the aria demo.

The most difficult part of the tasks was the installation of Player/Stage. In fact, all the installation is a mess. That's because while we were installing, they were a lot of libraries missing. And every new lib installation need another one(in a recursive way). After that all the thing were not that difficult.

Stage is a good simulator, the only things we must verify is the files we use to simulate the “pioneers”. These files are,
 World file
 CFG file (the one who reads the world configuration)
 The client proxy for the “pionners”

In the process of making the proxy client, the only thing we saw is that the libraries of the sensors(sonar and laser) are easy to use. The only thing you have to “think” is the way(distances of the object) the pionner will do in case of a object near.

Finally, we make the lab blueprint and modify some of the draw of the second floor of the CEDETEC. To prove the functionality of the pioneers in another environment, with all the interfaces(laser and sonar).

Primera Evaluación

Equipo en su conjunto

  1. Puntos favorables (ventajas).

Tomando en cuenta el avance de todos los integrantes del equipo, se han cumplido todas las metas al 100% (al 21 de Abril).

Entre todos, se tiene conocimiento del robot de manera física y simulada. Además, se tiene conocimiento suficiente para seguir avanzando.

Considero que se puede continuar con las tareas para la segunda evaluación sin ningún problema.

  1. Puntos negativos (desventajas).

No se trabaja como equipo. Existen sub-equipos dentro del equipo y personas que ni siquiera tienen equipo (David y Jean). Esto se explica por los horarios de los integrantes. Sin embargo, no parece haber mucha voluntad de las partes para llegar a un consenso sobre una hora a la semana en la que se puedan ver como equipo (la encuesta de Noodle que creo Renato sigue con solo 3 respuestas, de las cuales, solo una es de alumnos).

Los robots no han quedado listos para funcionar. Esto se debe a la falta de material y presupuesto del Tec.

Todavía no se tiene respuesta sobre el convenio entre universidades. Se sabe que en Alemania siguen trabajando en esto y tienen mucho interés los directivos, pero no se tienen fechas ciertas.

  1. Conclusiones hasta la primera evaluación.

Sí se cuenta con un equipo humano que tenga las habilidades necesarias para continuar con el proyecto. El hecho de que los robots no funcionen al 100% es una gran desventaja que espero pueda subsanarse durante el verano.

Terminando el semestre, se espera que el trabajo en equipo sea diario y que se aproveche para avanzar rápidamente.

Una felicitación para Laura por su gran avance y entrega al proyecto. Ha demostrado liderazgo y empuje para terminar sus tareas.

Carlos G. también merece ser felicitado por su gran empeño para que los robots queden funcionales.

  1. Recomendaciones acciones a tomar.

Al terminar el semestre, Todos los miembros del equipo deberán de ponerse al tanto en las tareas que no realizaron.

Carlos G., Laura y Arturo deben de auto-estudiar programación orientada a objetos, en especial C++.

Carlos L. y Luis deben de usar mucho más el blog. Arturo también.

Se debe de dejar claro el avance que se hace en pares de personas cuando se publica en el blog.

Se debe de ver la forma de que la parte administrativa del Tec nos pueda responder más rápidamente las peticiones económicas.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Task completion

Here are the tasks I have completed so far:

1.Identify the robots' sensors and actuators and list them in the blog: SICK laser, a pan tilt for camera, a gripper, two motors and four monster wheel. The only difference between the indoors and outdoors Pioneers is that the indoors has sonar too and only three wheels.

2.Check Aria demo functionality in the outdoors Pioneer: Teleoperate the outdoors robot 's sensors and actuators. The SICK laser was the only component that generated some conflict.

3.Installation of Ubuntu and Player Stage: Installation of Player/Stage on Ubuntu having some problems mostly with Stage's installation. Corroboration of its successful installation by running the simple.cfg file located at: home/username/playerstage_download/stage-2.1.1/worlds

4.After executing cfg file I test of the playerjoy tool whose principal characteristic is that it allows the teleoperation of the robots, both in Stage (simulation) and physically. Execution of playerv which is a GUI client program that allows the visualization of sensor and actuator readings (laser, sonar, camera and gripper) as well. For instance, the execution of playerv for the sonar in my computer is executed as follows:

playerv -h lola -p 6665 --sonar

5.Execution of the laserobstacleavoid program in several .cfg files such as simple.cfg and autolab.cfg. This program allows a robot to avoid obstacles through laser readings.

Example 0, laserobstacleavoid, sonarobstacleavoid, randomwalk and several other examples are located at:

/home/laura/playerstage_download/player-2.1.2/examples/libplayerc++

6.Compilation and execution of the example 0 program. Analysis of its code and familiarization with the concepts of proxy (laser and sonar mainly). Programs are compiled as follows:

g++ -o example0 `pkg-config --cflags playerc++` example0.cc `pkg-config --libs playerc++`


Analysis the codes of .cfg and .world files and consult of player's documentation of c++ libraries in order to see the functionality of several classes and parameters.

7.Creation world and cfg files that simulate the laboratories in which we work and creation of a program with two robots (simulating the Pioneer robots we are working with) that can navigate in this world.


We opened and analyzed the simple.cfg code.

Each cgf file controls a specific world file. We then realized we had to create a specific world file to be loaded in the cfg file we wanted to create.

The .world files are located at:

home/username/playerstage_download/stage-2.1.1/worlds


We realized we needed to place our .png in the bitmaps/directory, the one in which cave and the other .png files are located.

Once we had this information we got and modified a blackprint of the labs.

We placed this image in the following directory
/home/laura/playerstage_download/stage-2.1.1/worlds/bitmaps/lab2piso.png

We then created the file lab2piso.1.world in which we loaded our bitmap and created two robots

# load an environment bitmap
map
(
bitmap "bitmaps/lab2piso.png"
size [16 16]
name "lab2piso"
)


# create a robot
pioneer2dx
(
name "robot1"
color "red"
pose [-7 -7 45]
sick_laser()
watchdog_timeout -1.0
)



# create a robot
pioneer2dx
(
name "robot2"
color "blue"
pose [0 0 45]
sick_laser()
watchdog_timeout -1.0


We then created the lab2piso.cfg which includes the world's bitmap and robots

# load the named file into the simulator
worldfile "lab2piso.world"
)

# Export the map
driver
(
name "stage"
provides ["map:0" ]
model "lab2piso"
)

# Create a Stage driver and attach position2d and laser interfaces
# to the model "robot1"
driver
(
name "stage"
provides ["position2d:0" "laser:0" "sonar:0" ]
model "robot1"
)

# Create a Stage driver and attach position2d and laser interfaces
# to the model "robot2"
driver
(
name "stage"
provides ["position2d:0" "laser:0" "sonar:0" ]
model "robot2"
)


We created and compiled example 0.1.2 which includes two proxies and that controls one of the robots movements through its sonar readings.

PlayerClient robot2("localhost");
SonarProxy sp(&robot2,0);
Position2dProxy pp(&robot2,0);
LaserProxy lp(&robot2, 0);


Here is a screenshot of the lab2piso.cfg file and the execution of example0.1.2.



Something good has begun!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not posting. Since I installed Player/Stage I've worked with Luis. Just like he said, we already finish the task with the Stage service. We fixed some problems with the cfg file, in oredr to be able to end the clientproxy correctly. We found just a few problems(syntax), but now all is rigth. The code of the client proxy is already working with the both of the interfaces, laser and sonar options. And today in the meeting with Mr Jorge we showed him how it works. It's really grateful to be done and see the emulator working in a good way.

Regards,

Carlos L.

Something good has begun!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not posting. Since I installed Player/Stage I've worked with Luis. Just like he said, we already finish the task with the Stage service. We fixed some problems with the cfg file, in oredr to be able to end the clientproxy correctly. We found just a few problems(syntax), but now all is rigth. The code of the client proxy is already working with the both of the interfaces, laser and sonar options. And today in the meeting with Mr Jorge we showed him how it works. It's really grateful to be done and see the emulator working in a good way.

Regards,

Carlos L.

People data

Created a Google form and sent it to all as I wanted to contact Carlos G. and couldn't because the phones at the labs are not working(!) and I do not have his data.

Good results!

Hi everyone!
I haven't post in a while cause after I installed everything fine, and watched beautifully how player ran with the simple.cfg stage driver file, tried to run another one, that called other kind of drivers, but then I sadly discovered that it caused an error. Carlos L. and me spent many time trying to find what was wrong, to finally discovered that maybe in the latest version of player they changed the syntaxis and instead of having something like this in the cfg file:

requires ["odometry::position2d:0" ]

it should look like this:

requires ["odometry:::position2d:0" ]

it only needed to have another ":" after odometry.

This kind of errors make my nerves but we solved it at the end.

All the tasks were successfully done, getting some good satisfaction.

Regards

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Player/Stage Installation

Hi everyone!

I found a wiki for the installation of Player and Stage from some university in Denmark I guess...

It helped me a lot but there were some other problems which I had to solve. Now I believe it's finally installed so I will try to catch up with everyone else.

Here's the link: http://www.control.aau.dk/~tb/wiki/index.php/Installing_Player_and_Stage_in_Ubuntu

Regards!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Pio in the lab

Hey everyone!!!

Sorry for not posting earlier but I have been having some problems with a project. Anyway we have great news, since today Laura and I made the robot navigate in the lab, well virtually jeje in the image we obtained from planta fisica. It seems that the only thing we had to do was to change the image that the .world file uses. Now that we know it works we have to edit the image for the robot to navigate in the proper scale. Also we have to add the laser for the interiors robot, and a program which will use this laser. And we will add the exteriors robot in order to make them interact in the lab simulated environment.

Friday, April 17, 2009

About the Cable...

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I last posted, sorry! About the cable to connect the HD of the interiors robot to the motherboard it's a converter from Mini-IDE to IDE because the HD it's the size of a laptop. I was told it was hard to find but I found a store here in Mexico City that supposedly has it, at least in the catalog. Hope teacher Jorge can contact them and make the request so we can get it as soon as possible. The data of the company is:

Mex Shop, Norte 9 # 4619 Col. Defensores de la Republica C.P. 07780 México D.F.
Tel. 1204-8281 / 8282
Fax: 53 68 86 24

By the way I still can't seem to get Stage to work so I formated my HD and reinstalled Ubuntu, this weekend I will get it to work....

Take care and have a nice weekend. By the way, Renato can you post your Skype nickname so I can get in touch with you?

Bye!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Junta con Renato 17-abr-09

En Español para que quede clara la evaluación del martes 21 de Abril.

Decidimos que cada uno de nosotros generará evaluaciones para el avance del equipo y para el avance de cada uno de los integrantes.

Las evaluaciones contendrán lo siguiente:
  1. Puntos favorables (ventajas).
  2. Puntos negativos (desventajas).
  3. Conclusiones hasta la primera evaluación.
  4. Recomendaciones acciones a tomar.
Cada uno de los integrantes deberá de realizar una presentación de lo que ha aprendido/realizado hasta el día de la evaluación. Además, deberá de generar un pequeño documento con un resumen "ejecutivo" en donde se describa lo que sabe.

La idea de la evaluación es conocer el avance de cada uno de los integrantes en las tareas asignadas.

Cualquier duda por favor pregúntenme a mi o a Renato.

Map task

Hi everyone!

Yesterday Arturo and I began looking at some webpages that gave indications on how to create .cgf and .world files. The following link was useful for us: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~parker/Courses/CS594-fall07/handouts/PlayerStageGettingStarted.html#six

Concerning the creation of a world file, we started analyzing the information and parameters that need to be defined. We saw that an environment bitmap map was loaded, so what we are thinking is that, in order to create the .world file we only need to place our own .png file which we already have and change some of the parameters and conditions of it, for instance the size of the world and the robot properties, sensors and actuators (we need to define the sonar and the laser). We had to go to planta fisica to get a blackprint of cedetec's second floor.

Today I ran into Carlos.... Ishtarys (hope I spelled that correctly) and he told me he and Luis can help us with this task. I think that is great because we ran into several parts of the code we dind't entirely understand. I told him I was going to send him document with the specific doubts we have, which we'll do later on. However we can give you a quick overview of the task Jorge explained us:

We have to create a .world file of the lab and a .cfg file that provides the interface. We will then have to be abl¿le to make a program (we are planning to take a look at example0 for guidance) that lets both robots navigate in the map. The indoor robots would have both the laser and the sonar proxys and the outer one would have only the laser proxy.

He also told me we should meet personally, I think some of my available hours agree with his, however it is kind of complicated because their available hours are our class hours and viceversa. I would like you all to give me your emails in order to have contact through messenger.

Arturo will be posting later on with some specific questions we came up with while analyzing several codes.

Take care.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Dear team collegues,

I have made a Doodle for all of you so we can set our times for team collaboration. Please be sure to fill it as soon as possible so we can all know about our working times and availability. Also, please fill free to contact me if you have any question or comment about it.


As you can see is not worthy to make it in periods of every half hour for every weekday so it is only hourly. Also, even the calendar is supposed to be only for next week, we are going to take our times as weekly for at least the rest of the semester. The time is based in the Mexican time as all of you are there.

Please be sure to fill it carefully (Check out how it works first if it is your first Noodle) and make it available to anyone that has not received this post/email/message. Finally, try to fill it using your Gmail account.

In my case if you want me to chat/talk on Saturdays has to be on request.

Kind regards,

Renato.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Meeting 14-Apr-09 Part B

Met with Laura and Arturo.

They are very advanced in the SW part and have finished almost everything. They still need to finish the CFG for the map of the labs.

I asked them to program two robots in player/stage, one robot with a laser (exteriors) and the other with sonars and laser (interiors). These two robots will be avoiding obstables in the map of the labs.

On the day of the revision, I explained to them that they have to give me a presentation (a "lecture") explaining all about the player/stage and how they did it. This presentation must be blogged in a "executive" short form as a quick summary of tasks to do to learn this first part.

Once Laura and Arturo have finished with the SW part, they will start helping CarlosG with the HW part and will start learning C++.

Meeting 14-Apr-09

Present: Carlos G., Luis, Carlos L. Marissa, Jorge, David.

Batteries are a bit of a problem as we can't charge them all at the same time and because we can't leave them charging. Marissa and CarlosG are going to see if they can do something about it.

The first deadline is approaching fast. Next tuesday 21 of April is the deadline. We agreed to work as a team and divide tasks in two main issues: HW and SW. HW issues will be dealt with by CarlosG, Arturo and Laura. SW issues will be dealt with by CarlosL Luis and, Laura?

Please focus on your tasks and try to finish all on time. If you have questions, please ask Renato or me.

Renato and I will meet via Skype on Thursday to define the way evaluation will be.

Following tasks

The following task to be done is learn how to use another Player tool named Playernav which is an add-on with which you can control the robot.
http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/doc/Player-2.0.0/player/group__util__playernav.html
In order to use it we need to create a map of the real environment. We have two options to do this. The first one is to use the robot to make a log and then a map of the real environment. The other one is to get a map of the laboratory that doesn’t include any chairs or similar bodies.
After we learn how to use playernav we are going to be able to make a program with the client for the robot to move around.
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs4411/wiki/index.php?title=Assignment_1
In this link you can find the following tasks which are TASK 2 and TASK 3. The pmap tool is very useful for SLAM in two dimensions.
Renato also encouraged me to look at the codes of the playernav and the playerjoy tools in order to understand their functionality.
I’m shearing once again my available schedules. I hope some of them agree with yours
Mondays and Fridays: I am available between 1 pm and like 6 or 7 pm.
Wednesdays: I am available between 1 pm and 6 or 7 pm as well unless I have physics laboratory which I usually finish by 3 pm.
Tuesdays and Thursdays: I have a free hour from 1:30 to 2:30 pm and then from 4:00 to 5:30 pm.

HI!

At last, I have my computer on again(I have to buy another charger). I'm just finishing to install stage. I hope be for today.

Regards :D

Player installation and batteries

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a great week. Indeed I went yesterday with Arturo to the lab, however as he alredy told you we had some issues with the batteries and teh packages. I already know which repositories we need to install in order to get these missing packages. It might not be that fast to install it, however I don't think we should have too much problem as long as Pio doesn't keep shutting up every 15 minutes.

Last Thursday I talked to Renato through a Skype chat and he gave a lot of useful tips as well as some links in which the next tasks are explained. I will be posting later in order to share them.

Finally I would want to know if someone has alredy bought the HD cable for the indoors Pioneer. I would aldo like to know once again if some of your free hours agree with mine and with Arturo's in order to trully make team work. We both shared our schedules in previous posts but received no answer. We will be posting them once again.

Thank you all very much. See you soon!

Monday, April 13, 2009

Installing Player on Pio

Hey everyone!!! Hope you´re all doing well.

First of all I would like to explain that I wasn´t able to work in my computer in this past holy week because a friend was trying to fix the problem that I have with the video card.
Anyway, today I went to the lab with Laura and tried to install Player on Pio (the outdoor robot) but we found several problems.
The first one is that the robot was unable to download some files required to install the packages needed to run player. (I think Laura has already found a way to solve this)
And the other problem and main one is that the robot keeps shutting down after 15 minutes or so that we work with it. We tried to charge the batteries but one of the chargers disappeared from the lab and the other one doesn´t work. This means we have to charge each battery one by one and they told us that the charging time is around 8 to 10 hours. And maybe some batteries are not quite efficient anymore. So if anyone has seen the other charger please let us know. And maybe it would be precise to acquire some new batteries in order to work with the robots.
Regards!

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Player client questions and Holy Week

Hi everyone!

I was just looking at the "Program a Player Client" task and it wasn't really clear for me what is the difference between this task and the one the implied the execution of the samples. It said that I should compile the example0 program and then execute it, but since it was already compiled I just simply tested it in the cfg files just like I did with the laseobstacleavoid sample. I am thinking that what is required in this task is to change the variables of the example.cc code and then compile and execute it in order to see how does it work with these modifications. I looked at the code and started wondering how would we test this program on the robot so I'm rewritting the question posted by Jorge:


In the following code:

PlayerClient robot("localhost");

if we want the stage to be the host running the client, what should we write?

I know we won't have access to the robots this week but it would be very useful for me to clear this doubt in order to have a better understanding of concepts like client and service because I am having some trouble with these ideas.

I would appreciate that you told me in a more concrete way what exactly do I have to do for this task. Meanwhile I will be taking a look at the libplayerc++ features included in the web pages as well as at the tutorials included there.

I also wanted to ask you Renato when can you be available during this week in order to receive advise and talk about how will the revision on next week will take place through chat or skype

Thank you and I'll be seeing you soon.

Have a nice week!

Friday, April 3, 2009

Holy Week

We do not have access to Tec to work on Holy Week.

During this holiday, please concentrate on finishing all task related to player/stage, so we can return to Tec to finish with the work using the robots.

Renato has offered to be in touch. You can contact him using this blog (which e-mails him) or you can ask him for his skype account.

Please remember that the first revision is the week returning to Tec.

Have a great holiday and we'll be in touch through this blog.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Hi!

Hi all, I do want to be working on Player/Stage, installing it was really hard and now I would want to test it.

About installing it... somehow, like 15 min later after the installation my Ubuntu died with no reason, so I decided to install OpenSuse, and already installed player and stage, but I had to add some variables... but stilll I got one problem. When trying to run the test.cfg, got this problem:

Stage driver creating 3 devices
/usr/local/share/stage/worlds/test.cfg:19 error: unknown interface: [position]
error : Initialization failed for driver "stage"
error : failed to parse config file /usr/local/share/stage/worlds/test.cfg driver blocks

That "stage" driver is the name that is given inside the test.cfg but i don't know why it's making that error occurs.

Hope someone could help with this, maybe i missed some variable, or something else

Regards

Test

Test with new e-mail address.

Change of e-mail address

After this post I will be changing the e-mails that receive information about this blog to the distribution list: roboticamovil.cem@itesm.mx (except from Renato's).

If you want to contact any mamber of the group you can e-mail this list, which uses e-mail accounts at the Tec server (@itesm.mx).

If you do not receive blog posting anymore, please let me know.


Dear students,

I have some good news in matters of our project. I just finished a meeting with my bosses and they happily agree to collaborate in anything that could be required from DFKI side in order to achieve the exchange program. The next step is that we still need to provide the University of Bremen with documents that could allow an exchange program with Tec. This means now the decision will be taken from the arrangements that this two universities can manage with hopefully good results in their understandings. Also, I have to say that in here I am closely working with Dr. Thomas Vögele as he is giving us a lot of this time in this issue.

From our side, we are very interested in having all of you here at DFKI. Also, we will be looking forward to make this exchange program full fill all the Mexican and the German requirements. Therefore, we might need to make some adjustments in the general objectives of our project but they will still be based on working with agents. Specifically, we might need to take a decision of the work and activities you will be doing once coming to DFKI. However, this will be done once all of you could finish to familiarise with the control and development of the Player/Stage and Pioneer robot.

Finally, Jorge told me that some (all?) of you want to work next week on Player/Stage. If you decide to do that, please let me know as perhaps I could have some spare time to be online trying to help you for your improvements.

Kind regards,

Renato Samperio.

Aria Demo

Hi everyone!!! Hope you're doing well, today I went to the lab and tested the Aria Demo in the robot, but while doing it, the computer shut down and we could not restart it again. We think it might be the batteries non charging correctly. Well I think that would be all for now, regards.