Team up with one other student and choose a topic for your presentation. Send me email. First-come, first-served.
This page contains some sources from which you can get information for your presentations. I've also listed some topics that I expect you to cover. Look around, learn, obtain more information, distill it, and help your classmates learn this stuff. You may want to give some live demonstrations, if appropriate.
Things you must do:
Basic use of the LEGO parts.
Sources
- Chapter 4 of textbook.
- Fred Martin's Art of LEGO Design
- Martin, Robotic Explorations, pp. 157-173
- LEGO Design from Rice Univ.
Topics to Cover
- Gears, Pulleys
- Transmissions & Differential
- Clutch
- Rack and pinion
- Worm gears
How do sensors and effectors work?
Sources
- Martin, Robotic Explorations,
- Proximity
- from same web: sharing an input
- Sensor input page
Topics to Cover
- Digital and analog inputs (specifically those on RCX)
- Light sensors
- Shaft encoders
- Hysteresis
What else is there besides tank tracks and wheels? Can the robots walk? Can they grab things?
Sources
- Interesting designs:
spider,
Joe's Mindstorms Gallery,
Biped,
Centipede (also others),
- Dartmouth robot locomotion pages
- Other LEGO books (kept in lab)
Topics to Cover
- Types of locomotion
- Robot arms
What are strategies for control of robots?
Sources
- Robot Control from Rice Univ.
- The Basics of Robot Control by Maja J Mataric' from USC
- Martin, Robotic Explorations, Chapter 5
- Kundsen's book (there's a copy in lab), P. 179 on Subsumption architecture
- More advanced: Subsumption Architecture (also Brook's paper)
Topics to Cover
- Feedback, etc.
- Robot control architectures
- Multitasking (if we haven't covered it already)
Where is the robot?
Sources
- UNC Technical report by D. Bhatnagar
- Chapter 6 of Martin, Robotic Explorations
Topics to Cover
- Technologies for tracking: ultrasound, beacons, etc.
- Ways to track our robots
How can we use the LEGO cameras to control our robots based on what the camera sees?
Sources
- Vision Command manual
- Web page about VC with NQC
Topics to Cover
- How to use the Vision Command
- Using it with NQC
What are ways to solve a maze? This is part of the larger problem of robot motion planning.
Sources
- J. Allen, J. Hendler, and A. Tate, editors. Readings in Planning. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1990.
- B. A. Nayfeh. "Using a Cellular Automata to Solve Mazes." Dr. Dobb's Journal, February 1993.
- WEB PAGES
Topics to Cover
Last modified Friday, October 19, 2001 09:39 PM by lastra@cs.unc.edu