June 15, 2003
ER1 Does the Living Room
6/15/2003 ER1 Does the living room
Ok now I wanted to try some navigation by picking an object to navigate to as a landmark.
So I took the robot downstairs to my recreation room. I placed the robot in front of my
wifes hanging quilt. I took a snapshot of the quilt and then moved the robot about 15 feet
away from the quilt. I then programmed the robot to recognize the word "Robot" and the word
"Cooking". Once these two voice commands where heard by the robot he would reply "I do not
know what is cooking, let me go and find out.". Then the robot would start on a straight
path toward the quilt. Once the quilt was detected another behavior would kick in causing
the robot to move 1.5 feet away from the quilt. Then the robot would turn left 90 degrees
and attempt to navigate between the couch and the wall to go into the kitchecn. This gap
between the wll and the couch is very tight and I had my doubts that the robot would get
through it ok. There is only about 3 inches on each side. The first attempt did fine
finding the quilt but the navigation between the couch and the wall was unnsucessfull. So
I reduced the sensitivity on the IR sensors and gave it another try. And this time the
robot was able to squeeze between the couch and the wall. I attempted this a few more
times. The quilt was found every time but the navigation between the couch and the wall
was not always successfull. This proved I could use landmark navigation with a camera
with some great success. I am no longer restricted to encoder errors!! Landmark navigation
is a reality now and I can use it to solve the "Where am I?" problem.
Later on in the night I was upstairs working on my computer when I decided I was thirsty.
Since my robot was downstairs I decided to telnet into it and command it to say "Mike is
thirsty and he would like a beer". I did this several times with different wording and
it eventually produced me a beer from my wife downstairs. Wow I am beggining to like this!
Posted by Mike Linnen at June 15, 2003 12:08 AM
