My new robot

Yeah, that's a really nice job.  Great work!

That iRobot Create platform looks nice.  I've beet futzing around on and
off for months trying to make a platform for a round droid-style robot.  
I have the motors, I'm just lousy at making frames and mountings and
couplings and whatnot.  Maybe I should just get a Create and have done
with it (though I'd have to scale back my ambitions a bit, as I don't
think it could carry everything I had in mind).

Cheers,
- Joe

--
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Learn more and discuss via:  <http://www.strout.net/info/science/polywell/>

The CREATE was a good starting point but I plan on building a more
capable robot on a bigger mobile base. In fact, I can remove most of
the robot from the CREATE base and transplant it onto a larger base
because it's only held on by 4 hex spacers.

Thats a great bit of kit, well done!

Can i ask a  few questions:

Did you write the image processing software? Does it know how far it
is from the object by recognising the object and knowing both the
absolute position of itself and the plant in the room, or is it
determining the position relative to itself via that vision software
alone? Can it determine at what angle it approaches the plant?
What OS / hardware is the robot running onboard, does it pipe the
imaging info back to the laptop for control and identification or does
it have on-board image processing and you are just observing?

The image processing software came with my ER-1 robot kit from
Evolution Robotics. The software has a telnet hook that allows other
apps to get the image data such as recogized object, distance, x-y
position and confidence level. It is based on something called the
Sift algorithm and can recogize objects independent of orientation and
distance. Unfortunately, it was patented but you can find
implementations on the web that I guess would be ok to use for
experimental purposes.

All of the code runs on board the robot. I am using WinXP and my own
code written in Visual Basic 6.0. I can control my interface remotely
by using video conferencing software (Microsoft Netmeeting). I made
this project for an iRobot contest and I was under a lot of time
pressure. Many of the things I did from a software standpoint weren't
elegant but good enough for proof of concept.

Next step is to port things over to vb.net and OpenCV. I'm going to
work on code to make the robot semi autonomous - SLAM and obstacle
avoidance. I was also looking at Linux but it's a huge learning curve
for me compared to Windows.

I

Thats great information, cheers - it doesnt look like you were under
time constraints so thats even more impressive!
I work mainly in RTAI linux for my current work and before that I
hadnt ever programmed at all - GUIs are not my strong point which
rather hampers my attempts, and when I looked at the various methods
of doing GUIs in linux I promptly decided it wasnt going to happen,
hence even more impressed by your work. Keep it up!

James

I have that software too.
Which version are you using ? ( The latest I have is 1.127. )
Which API command do you use to get a recognized object ?

And perhaps more importantly ... did you win the contest ?!?!?   :-)
Thanks !
JCD

I used the latest version on the website which I think is the same as
yours. To get the image data you have to use these 2 commands after
telneting into the robot:

sense objects
events

When an object is detetected it will return a string with the object
information. I used VB to parse the data into text boxes.

I won't know the contest results until October.

Man that is a REALLY sharp looking bot!
The iCreate logo on the bowl helps make it look very professional. How did
you do that ? Does the iCreate come with some logo decals or something like
that ?

Anyway, congrats on a *great* build !
jcd

Adding the logos was something that I decided to do at the last
minutes. I just lifted the image from the I Robot website and then
printed them on an injet with adhesive paper. The blue logo matched
nicely with the blue tubing used for the water pump system. I also
found a matching blue water bottle used as the reservoir.

Slick!