Tag Archives: Nao

First Nao Goal

Using the first draft of our open loop walk, Marvin scored the first goal for any Nao in our lab! With competitions fast approaching, we are planning on taking advantage of our upcoming spring break to whip our robots into shape. On the menu: adding sensor feedback to close the loop on the walk, porting to NaoQi 1.2, tuning localization, and starting to work on positioning.

The open loop walk showed in the video still has a tendency to build up harmonic oscillations and tip over, but with a little support, and a brand new behavior, the robot is able to push the ball into the goal.

Our first Nao is on the FedEx truck for delivery!

After an announcement yesterday that Aldebaran finally sent the first of our Nao, we got a tracking number this morning which shows the yet unnamed robot’s journey through Paris, Newark and then finally Portland. This morning at 7 am it was put on a truck for delivery, so it should make here by tonight! Stay tuned for unboxing pics and more coverage.

Nao turn-in-place demo

After a breakthrough in robot motion technology, our nao’s can turn in place at an astounding rate of 16 degrees-per-second. The aibos probably turn at least 10 times that fast. Eventually we will run machine learning on the gait to get a faster one, but this one is pretty good.

The key to having a stable turn is to be able to widen the angle between the legs and take one step with wide legs, and then a step which restores them to normal. The only joint on the Nao which can widen this angle is the HipYawPitch, so you need to compensate for it’s use with the other Hip joints.

See the video here.

How To: Use Webots 5.7.2 to play with a virtual Nao

Cyberbotics has released a new version of their Webots software which allows anyone to play with the Nao prototype. In version 5.7.2, the Nao model comes bundled in the Webots/projects/contests/nao_robocup folder, and is accessible to anyone. The Aldebaran library wrappers to the Webots function calls, however, are not available to the public, since these were released to the SPL robocup teams only.

Here is a simple guide to get started playing with the virtual robot:

  1. Download the Webots 5.7.2 package from here, and install it.
  2. Open Webots, and skip the intro demo. Choose Open from the file menu, and navigate to Webots/projects/contests/nao_robocup/worlds/ and open one of the world files (e.g. nao1.wbt).
  3. Navigate to Webots/projects/contests/nao_robocup/controllers/nao_soccer_player_red/ and open the C file (you can open it in Webots or in your favorite editor). Make some changes, and save them. Type ‘make’ in the terminal (in that directory), and reload the world from within Webots.

That’s it! The controller file in nao_soccer_player_red/ needs to interface directly with the Webots interface for moving the model, but it should be relatively straight forward to figure out.

Note: Many of the Nao files in the 5.7.2 release are heavily checksummed, and won’t work if they are modified. Avoid recompiling the nao_soccer_supervisor or modifying any of the world files or the prototype files, or Webots will not run.