Dave Evans has
provided an updated set of .NET controls for the White Box Robotics 914 PC Bot.
You can download them for free from
Dave's Website. New features can be found in the
Release
Notes.
Dave has also mentioned that he has been working hard on
BRAIN over the last year, and has added multiple new features as fixes,
including, but not limited to:
-Audio and video streaming across the Internet with multi-codec support.
-Vastly improved motion detection.
-Color blob tracking (follow lines, track objects, etc).
-Enhanced script editor.
-New panels - web browser, console, more...
-Complex, nested expression support (IF ((2+2)^2-@SQRT(9))... etc...
-Dozens of new functions: (@SQRT, @SIN, @COS, @ROUND, @UPPER, @BINARY, @HEX,
etc...)
Here's some further information on the three YouTube videos that were posted
in
yesterdays article. This research is from The R&D Institute for Intelligent
Robotic Systems Computer Science Department, College of Management Academic
Studies (COMAS), Rishon Le-Zion ISRAEL.
Cutting Edge Solutions
Established in 1998, the Computer Science Department of COMAS (the College of
Management, Academic Studies Division) in Rishon LeZion, Israel, has developed a
wide array of capabilities, knowledge, and skills for generating solutions to
complex technological challenges.
The Department extensive interdisciplinary experience focuses on robotics and
such related fields as computer vision and intelligent video systems. Research
activity in this latter field is now being carried out within the framework of
the R &D Institute for Intelligent Video Systems. This institute was funded by
the parents of the three IDF soldiers, in memory of their sons, Benny Avraham,
Adi Avitan, and Omer Souad, kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah in 2000. The
Institute was inaugurated in June 2008, and is currently engaged in developing
autonomous robotic systems to identify and handle suspicious objects as well as
in developing autonomous robotic mapping, delivery and entertainment systems.
There are numerous other examples of the Department's expertise. For example,
students at the Department, as part of their course work, have created many
remarkable projects demonstrating an impressive mastery of software development
and the computer science. To name but a few projects:
Mine-detection in unapproachable places or on a battlefield
A laser system for identifying suspicious substances
An infrared coastal night surveillance system.
A guide for the blind that measures distances by sound
At present there are over 500 students at the Department, more than 700
graduates and 40 faculty members. The R&D Institute for Intelligent Video
Systems is headed by Dr.Yehuda Elmaliah. Specializing in multi-robot systems,
formation control and coordination tasks, Dr. Elaliah obtained his doctorate
from Bar Ilan University. He has published many articles on different aspect of
robotics for prestigious refereed journals.
COMAS
COMAS is the largest college in Israel with over 11,000 students and 28,000
alumni. It offers degrees (bachelors and masters) in computer science, business
administration, law, media, economics, organization development and consulting,
criminology and criminal justice, behavioral sciences and interior design. The
College campus is located in Rishon Lezion, Israel's fourth largest city,
situation just south of Tel Aviv.
These are pictures from the Institute inauguration. The three ladies are the
three mothers of the three soldiers mentioned above. The writing is in Hebrew in case anyone was wondering. Click on the pics for larger versions:
The R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems Computer Science Department, College of
Management Academic Studies, in Israel, have made a video to wish everyone Happy
Passover
They also have various other videos on YouTube, including 914 PC Bots driven by WiiMote:
I spotted an interesting
article and
tutorial over at
Roborealm.com for robotic obstacle avoidance using vision only. For this
example they have used a Lego robot base with an Asus EeePC, which shows that
you don't need much processing power to do some simple machine vision. Make sure
you check out the
video of it all in action on page 7.
Roborealm is provided with various interfaces to specific hardware as well as
API support and services for Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. So using the
914 PC Bot MRDS services or
C6Jones720's API you could reproduce the example with your 914 PC Bot, or
any other hardware platform that supports MRDS.
Now C6Jones720 has gone a step further by kindly releasing the full source
code for the API.
This release is important as it will allow anyone to make
changes to the API in order that third party 914 software can be specifically
tuned to suit a specific purpose. It will also assist anyone in finding out how
to write software that can directly communicate with the 914's M3 controller. If you wish to compile it, you will need C++ from Visual Studio 6 or later.
A big thanks to C6Jones720 for this release - I'm sure that many people will
find this extremely useful.
At the weekend of 14-15th March it was the
UK's
first Maker Faire in Newcastle Upon Tyne, which took place as part of
Newcastle Science Fest.
Paul Foster and
James Bruton ran an
exhibit called 'Build the 'Jetsons' digital lifestyle today' featuring two White
Box Robotics 914 PC Bots as well as some other Microsoft Robotics Developer
Studio technology and a home brew
multi-touch display that Paul built.
You can see coverage of the UK Maker Faire on the
BBC News website, check out
2:10 for the parts on MRDS and PC based robots.
You may
remember that Cogmation
announced support for the 914 PC Bot within their
RobotSuite
software. It appears that the main integration is complete as Shawn has posted a
video on his blog of the 914 doing obstacle avoidance using
robotFoundary.
Interestingly, Shawn is using a Mac-mini in his 914 instead of a Windows /
mini-itx based computer, although it appears he is still working on actually
fitting it inside. You can check out both articles on
Shawn's blog.
Inspired by
this recent thread in the forums, C6Jones720 has decided to release his 914
API and some open source programs, tutorials, and documentation.
This is the same API that the recently released
MRDS services are based on. This is a key piece of software because it will
allow anyone to program the 914's M3 controller with pretty much any Windows
programming language. Full API documentation is provided along with some
beginners tutorials and example programs which will make the 914 do SLAM / auto
map building, and navigation using only it's IR sensors.
C6Jones720 mentions that there are several different versions of the API in
use with the sample programs, so the .dll in the folder with each program should
stay with it to prevent unexpected results.
Paul Foster has given a
presentation at Microsoft's ReMix UK 08. In it he discusses Microsoft Robotics
Developer Studio and talks about his very own 914 PC Bot called A1-DW. The
entire MRDS presentation is an hour long, and there are also many other
presentation videos available for viewing, however, if you just want to see the
PC Bot then you'll need to do the following:
This software is a collaborative effort from
C6Jones720, who wrote low level interface to the 914's M3 controller, and
Paul Foster, who
wrote the MRDS services.
The download is available now, and for free. Get it here:
PCBotServices.zip
The instructions for use are simply to unzip the files and copy them into the
bin directory of your MRDS V1.5 installation folder. You can then follow any of
the
tutorials that use a differential drive robot, specifying the PC Bot
manifest file included in the zip.
