OK, after ~4 introductions to our code structure, things are going smoothly. I’ve had good meetings with Matt, Yi, Keith, and Jesse. Here’s the current schedule (meet in the lab):
Monday-9pm-Quentin, George, Mort
Tuesday-2:30pm-Oliver, Tracy
Wednesday-4pm-George, Ferd, Mort
Thursday-11am-Pat
Thursday-2:30pm-Jeremy, maybe John (Friedman?)
Friday-2pm-Allison
Packed up my trusty ‘Aibo7’ and am heading up to the confines of the lab tomorrow. Working on getting everything going when we get back.
After the python hurdle, I’ve been spending more time on AiboConnect. I’ve retooled the server-side part of it so that there is less message-passing and the code is WAY simplified. I even added some functionality: head motions can be put on a timed function just the same way the leg motions can.
For any of you that have a windows machine and want to use it – here’s what you do.
First of all you download cygwin from here. This is a setup file, it will ‘guide’ you through the setup process, but not too much since it is a linux application and they believe in the intelligence of their users. Basically, if you go clicking next until the thing goes away, you won’t get what you need. You need to check that you have a few programs which don’t come back with the official bundle. I suppose you can download the whole thing, but it’s something in the order of 800 MB, so I don’t know how useful that will be.
Anyways, what you need to get on there:
These might also be useful.
You can always rerun the setup and choose additional packages that you need.
Now we need the OPEN-R libraries from their official website.
I can’t give a direct link because there is a login part, and you’ll need to register (if you haven’t already). So, get these from in there somewhere:
Extract them in /cygwin/usr/local. Now you should have everything you need to compile open-r related c files. I hope I’m not just clogging up the place and annoying people with this.
Note: semi-copied from here. I just took out the essential, but you can check out the original. I take no credit for it. It’s how I set up my own cygwin.
Ported over AiboConnect into the new architecture. Instead of its own Aperios Object, it’s merely a c++ file within the vision module. Check here for a nifty camera shot from the dog’s nose. Update:: Motions work too. This is really cool: all the pieces are coming together.
Architecture is really a tough call now. I need to pick an overall design of Aperios Objects (modules) and keep it stable until the end of the year. I’m probably going to have one for vision (plus Python hooks), motion, and communication. And how to link various bits of code for each module? Common header files? Namespaces? Heck–I could do like UPenn and just have one Aperios object for everything.
.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }
.flickr-yourcomment { }
.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
After many frustrating days and numerous debugging styles, I’ve finally gotten Python to run on Aperios!
I’ve often read that good Programmers are not amazingly proficient coders but they instead excel at debugging their own code. Boy–do I need to get better at this. The technique that finally got things going was taking the entirety of the 2005 rUNSWift code and widdling it down to the Python layer. This allowed me to step incrementally while making sure things stay working. Long process–but I learned heaps about Aperios, Python, and C++ in general.
Onward!
The Age of Python is Nigh: weeded down UNSW’s code to the bare Python essentials. Both the python code and the C++ hooks now compile. They crash the dog on boot-up, but they compile!
But awesome: this just in from the official 4 Legged League mailing list:
There has been some discussion about organising a demonstration robocup game in Bremen – 11×11 Aibos on a mid-sized field. The thought is to try and make it a pick-up match (using the same ideas that UNSW and Newcastle used in the legged open challenge last year – a standardized broadcast packet for comms). This would require access to a mid-sized field.
How many legged teams might be interested in participating?
We’ve got 11 aibos…Chown-dog ?
Northern Bites is one of four six USA teams pre-registered for the 4 Legged League big event: international Robocup 2006. Teams still have fourteen days to pre-register–and this is really only a signal of intent. A real application is due in february.
