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CS 499 - Programming for Robotics

Fall 2015

The purpose of this project is to discover and explore the elements of creating and programming a mobile robot system. The project consists of three phases:

  1. Design and construction of a mobile robot
  2. Creation of a mini-language (DSL) for programming the robot's actions
  3. Building a real-time interface for interacting with the robot via the DSL and receiving robot sensor feedback

Phase 1 - Design and construct robot

The Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, credit-card sized computer, will be the central platform for constructing the robot. The Raspberry Pi is often used for teaching and learning, so many resources are available for documentation, sample projects, and peripherals like robot wheels and sensors. The robot itself will be mobile, having wheels (or tracks) and sensors such as a proximity sensor, light sensor, camera, et cetera. This phase will include designing the complete system, sourcing and acquiring all materials, physically constructing the robot, installing necessary drivers and software, and getting basic motion functionality working.

Phase 2 - Create robot DSL

Software that interacts with hardware systems (like a robot) is typically written in low-level languages like C/C++, which makes it difficult to program a simple robot in a way that is easy to learn or understand. Since the ultimate goal of this project is to make the robot’s movements and actions programmable (and scriptable), a higher-level domain-specific language will be created. This language can then be used to program the robot in an expressive and elegant way.

Phase 3 - Build control dashboard

The final phase of the project will tie together everything that has been created so far. A custom control dashboard will be built that will allow for two-way communication with the robot. It will enable the programmer to issue commands directly to the robot, create and run full scripts, and view sensory data returned from the robot, which may include location, orientation, camera view, or others depending on the sensors available. A learning opportunity in creating this dashboard will be to explore concepts behind single-page web applications and real-time communication using web sockets.