Team Members:

Dave Rudolph - Lead Web Designer

Lead Programmer

Samara Secor - Lead Analyst

Documentation Specialist

Project Advisors:

Dr. Jerry Weinberg - CS Department

Dr. Engel - EE Department

EE Dept. Members:

Jason Range

Dan McGibney

CE Dept. Members:

Andy Penrod

Achu Pradhan

This year is the second year of this competition. The objective is to build a robot which will compete in the following challenge:

Qualification Round:

The robot must navigate through a maze in less that 20 minutes.

Competition Round:

The robot must navigate and map a maze and then race through the maze as quickly as possible.

• Robbie must find it’s way from entrance to exit within 20 minutes.

• Robbie must remember the path to get through the maze.

• Robbie must then run the race again using his memory and get to the exit as fast as possible.

• Must fit between walls 8 inches apart.

• Must be no taller that 12”.

• May not mark the track in any way.

• May not be connected to any external devices.

Agent – Anything that can be viewed as perceiving an environment through sensors and acting upon that environment through effectors.

Rational Agent – One that does the right thing.

•How do you evaluate success?

•When do you evaluate success?

effectors

environment

percepts

actions

agent

?

sensors

• Inaccessible: an agent can only perceive near-by stimuli and has limited attention

• Non-deterministic: the real world has a lot of uncertainty

• Dynamic: the environment is changing while the robot is reasoning and acting

PAGE descriptions – List the agent type, its percepts, actions, goals, and environment.

Agent Type Percepts Actions Goals Environment

Maze Racer Differences inlight, touch,

rotation clicks

Turn right orleft, drivestraight,

internal u-turn,mapping of

maze, followingOf map

Get throughmaze, be thefastest, map

maze &successfullyfollow map

Mazecontainingdirectionalchoices of

2 (no more, noless)

Finite State Machine

Assess Environment

Partition into Situations

Create Situational Responses

Import Behaviors to Robot

Run Robotic Experiments

Evaluate Results

Enahance, Expand, Correct Behavioral Responses

Done

Subsumption Architecture

•Also known as reactive planning.

•It can be implemented with either a table or set of condition-action rules.

•It is hierarchical in nature. The default behavior can be overridden by behaviors that have higher priority (those that would score more ‘points’ or bring it closer to the goal state).

Subsumption Architecture

int map() {

//multiple threadsopenLeft();openRight();deadEnd();arbitrate();return;

}

int openLeft() { while(1) {

if (opening on left){ Turn Left; Store 0 in map;}

} return;}

int openRight() { while(1) {

if (open on right){ store 0 in map;}

} return;}

int deadEnd() { while(1) {

if (deadEnd){ Virtual U-turn; Replace 0 w/ 1; !map next turn; turn left next;}

} return;}

Platforms:

The Lego Mindstorms RCX

+ Simplistic

- Limited Sensors and Motors

Handy Board

+ More Sensors and Motors

- Difficult to Program

LEGO Mindstorm RCX

3 Output or Motor Ports (A, B, C)

3 Input or Sensor Prots (1, 2, 3)

IR Transmitter/Reciever

The Handy Board

The Handy Board is based on the 52-pin Motorola MC68HC11 processor, and includes 32K of battery-backed static RAM, four outputs for DC motors, a connector system that allows active sensors to be individually plugged into the board, an LCD screen, and an integrated, rechargable battery pack. This design is ideal for experimental robotics project, but the Handy Board can serve any number of embedded control applications.

Advantages:

Nearly C++ functionality

Open Source Kernel

(adaptable to our needs)

Disadvantages:

Complexity of Program

Bugs in new language.

Advantages:

Simplistic

Easy to learn

Disadvantages:

Limited number of var.

Limited data types

Functionality not complex enough.

Evolutionary Model

• Lends itself to testing and improvement in several betas.

Benefits:

Downfalls:

•Difficult to apply to a timeline due to iterations.

Sensor Port Limitations:

We must find a way to use 5 sensors given only 3 sensor ports.

Robot Challenge:

RCX Robot vs. Handy Board Bot