Andy Sayler
andy.sayler@gmail.com
Constantin Berzan
Constantin.Berzan@tufts.edu
Last updated: 12-15-10

git-hub repo: https://github.com/cberzan/bbr-mapper

This project and the source code associated with it is licensed under version 3
of the GPL. A copy of this license is located in this directory in gpl-3.0.txt.
This project makes use of external code that may conform to separate
licensing requirements. Please consult the ADE and Jama licenses for
more information.

bbr-mapper is an effort to produce a functioning SLAM system using the ADE
architecture (http://ade.sourceforge.net/) on a Videre robotic base
(http://www.videredesign.com/). This project was undertaken as a semester
project for the COMP150-Behavior Based Robotics course at Tufts University
led by Prof. Matthias Scheutz in the fall of 2010.

The SLAM system used in this project closely matches that of the system
described in the "SLAM For Dummies Tutorial" by Soren Riisgarrd and Morten
Rufus Blas. It attempts to fill in some holes in their tutorial and
produce a functioning EKF based SLAM system. It should be noted that as of
the completion of this project, the EKF portion of the SLAM system is
functional, but buggy, and produces unstable output. At this time,
there are no plans to continue the development of this code and correct
these errors.

This readme and the project code assume that the code is organized in two
parallel directories sharing a common top level directory: an ADE directory
containing an ADE SVN checkout, and a bbr-mapper directory containing this
github checkout.

The project is organized into the following directories:

ade-patches: Patches for SVN revision 2746 last updated on 2010-11-17
             at 15:43:29.
maps: Some test maps for the ADE simulation environment
odomtest: Code for performing odometry test on the Videre base
odomTestSim: Code for performing odometry tests in the ADE sim.
presentation: The final LaTeX/beamer presentation for this project.
progress-reports: LaTeX progress reports during the project.
slam: The bulk of the SLAM code for the project.
svg2xml: A tool for converting svg images to the xml maps required by the ADE
         simulation environment.
util: Some tooling for the project

You may find the following files helpful:

BOOTSTRAP: Information on starting ADE and bbr-mapper.
description.html: The initial description of the project goals.
QUICKSTART: Information on setting up ADE and bbr-mapper.
screenshot*: A couple of screenshots from the running project.
WORKFLOW: Information on the organization of the ADE and brr-mapper code.

If you are interested, the final reports associated with this project are also
available in the following files:
sayler-report.pdf: Andy Sayler's final report. Focuses on EKF implementation
                   and errors.
berzan-report.pdf: Constantin Berzan's final report. Focuses on landmark
                   extraction and mapping.

Finally, this project makes use of the Jama Java matrix package. More
information on this package is available here:
http://math.nist.gov/javanumerics/jama/. The compile scripts assume that the
Jama jar file is located in the top level bbr-mapper directory.