1D-navigation using a scalar Kalman filter
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
This Tribot has a fixed caster and moves back and forth into one direction only. The special receiver from our infrared/ultrasonic beacon system is mounted on the NXT. Not visible on the picture is the beacon itself that periodically sends out IR/US bursts, which are used to measure the distance between the robot and the beacon. The robot is programmed to follow a 1D-path that corresponds to an inverted cosine in the time domain. It’s the goal that the robot should move along the planned trajectory with best timing.
Valuable distance cues are only available rarely. Errors in the localization system may occur. In order to estimate the position and control the robot’s speed, we are using a scalar Kalman filter. The program has been realized with the LabVIEW NXT toolkit. (It was particularly tricky to do the job with integer numbers.)
http://www.convict.lu/htm/rob/ir_us.htm#Kalman
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NXT MATLAB Bluetooth Router
Saturday, January 17th, 2009
Ever wanted to setup a complete Bluetooth network made by a master NXT and 3 slave NXTs with the slightest effort? The NXT MATLAB Bluetooth Router NXC library I wrote solves this problem.
The NXT brick attached to the computer via USB acts as wireless router: it connects to named slave NXTs automatically, and then forwards them the USB messages you send from the computer. This way, you can control a 3-mobile robot team using the powerful MATLAB environment. Click here for details and download.
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Tribot simulation from SimplySim
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
SimplySim, a French simulation company, released a package for MS Robotics Developer Studio (whose ‘Express’ version is free) that simulates TriBot. You can design code that “run” on the simulated TriBot on a real tribot (via interface, I guess Bluetooth).
The simulation has many sensors implemented, including US. This mean you can, for example, play with navigation, catching objects, mapping etc. in the simulated office environment.
See information and download here.
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Cool Mindstorms site
Thursday, January 1st, 2009
There are many excellent LEGO Mindstorms sites out there. Here certainly one of the most remarkable high level sites from the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland - don’t be afraid of the German language; just go through the many projects - :
http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/tik/education/lectures/PPS/mindstorms/
… and admire this one:
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