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Robot Firefighters Have Another Go At Trinity
mtDNA writes: "The New York Times has an article
on the eighth annual robotic firefighting contest at Trinity College." The contest's home page has contestant rankings as well as some great photos and the rules contestants had to live by. Next year promises to be even more challenging. Anyone there to offer some first-hand reports?
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Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Sorry about the lack of paragraphs... I sort of forgot. Anyways, here are my responses:
The circuitry used was a 2 resitor/1 capacitor setup, although I'm not sure of the exact values... So it was a filter which essentially cleaned up the static/crosstalk along the wires.
as for the number of sensors, there are ways to acheive the same results using fewer sensors, however, it's much much easier when the simplest way route is taken... in this case, when working with a 6 MHz microcontroller, trig is a royal pain in the neck, as anything as far as floating point math is concerned will just about bring it to a halt.
In addition, one of the biggest problems I found while programming is the large difference in the world of robotics between theory and practice. So while a sensor should be taking a reading in the exact direction that you point it, and the wheels should move the exact speed you tell them to, it quickly gets confused because this generally doesn't happen. So, by adding more sensors, you can get many readings of your surroundings at once that just can't be gotten with 2 sensors no matter how hard you try. (For example, think about what happens when a robot following a wall runs into a corner, or hits the corner at an angle...)
Think of it like this: Assuming the sensors are fixed i.e. they dont rotate, and the robot is pointing at a wall at an angle, how does it know INSTANTLY without moving where the wall is, and what angle it's pointing at, considering the wall can be ANYWHERE relative to the robot. With only 2 sensors, I don't see how it can be done unless the robot or the sensors move, which adds a whole other degree of complexity. Hope that helped.
Once upon a time...
well jobs being taken over by computers/robots/etc has been a problem for all of history. When computers first came out people were so worried that their jobs would be taken (and they were) but computers created other jobs for people in other areas...
I say that if a robot can do it better, let it happen. Firefighters are a necessary part of our society (unfortunatly) but it is a dangerous and tax payer expensive job. If a robot was put to the task it is likely that much less money would have to be spent, and many more lives would be saved.
as far as which one to save... who knows. the current state of AI is low compared to what would need to be available for this type of descision making, but who knows what will happen.
I say use whatever is best for the job.
Read that John Rowland article again. He vetoed the bill. He was the only one who was *not* ignorant. He may be a politician (strike one) but he's a very smart guy who was lucky enough to get a good education and learned the difference between sound public policy and hysterical nonsense.
Before attending Villanova, he went to one of the best high schools in the state of Connecticut. Nothing beats a good Catholic school. Nothing. You can bet your last dollar there will *never* be any violence at that school. There are good, smart teachers there that genuinely care about their students. They expect the kids to attain a certain level of academic achievement, and strive to help them do it. A sound education is good preventative medicine for ignorance.
I'm a Democrat and I vote for Rowland. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I went to the same high school.
Just thought I'd put in my 2 cents... My friend and I built the 8th place High school robot (milton), which in fact would have come in second except for a stupid error in the code (I'll get to that) which I wrote. Here's my insider's perspective: (I worked closely with all the Trinity teams in their lab, although my friend and I did all the work) This was our second robot we built, last year we did significantly worse (23rd) but we were on the local news, so that was a kick. We're funded by the United Technologies/Trinity College Engineering Initiative, who paid for 99% of our robot. Although many of the groups choose to either custom build the entire robot or build it from various kits, we took possibly the best route, and used legos for all of the structure and the motors. However, Lego Mindstorms just don't cut it, as they dont permit enough sensors. We used a Super T-Comp made by Ray's Robotic Racers (I forget the URL, but it's probably something obvious) as our microcontroller, and I programmed it using Interactive C. The wall sensors are standard sensors made by Sharp, which are more well known for their use in auto-flush urinals. (There's a bit of extra circutry we add in in order to clean up the singnal... i.e. give more consistan readings). There is also a stripe sensor, which is a light sensor mounted next to an LED, which tells fairly accurately where the stripes are that mark entrances to rooms. And there's the candle sensor, which is a straight up IR sensor, usually mounted in some sort of reflective device, such as the mirror from a flashlight, so that the window in which the sensor "sees" the candle is narrower. At a minimum, a robot needs 2 wall sensors (one for each side), a candle sensor, and a stripe sensor. However, it's hard to measure the distance from a wall accurately with only 1 sensor on the side, since the robot could (and usually is) turned at an angle, so think of an arc: The actual distance to the wall varies, but the line perpendicular to the side of the robot extending to the wall can be of constant length, depending on how the robot is oriented. Therefore, our robot had 2 sensors on each side so it could "balance" itself, and make sure it was parralell at any time. It also had a front sensor, so it could see if it was nearing a wall in front, which is critical due to the way the robot "decides" to do things. The robot decides when to turn, stop, rotate, turn its fan on to put the candle out, etc. using readings from the sensors. So for example, if it is following a wall at a constant distance (an important feature, mind you) and it sees that all of a sudden that wall doesnt exist, then it knows that it should turn. Same thing with a wall in the front: if it gets to close, it might need to turn. Of course, which way to turn and whatnot is governed by the program, which essentially knows the entire layout of the maze, and what should happen when, and looks for those specific events to happen. Back to why we would have gotten 2nd... The robot was looking for a stripe near the candle (it had already located it), but intead got off course, because it saw that it was getting too close to a wall (on the side) and needed to turn away... It turned too much, and planted on a front wall before seeing the stripe, because although it was looking for a side wall, it wasnt looking for a front wall. The devil is in the details. Anyway, this year they added a few things, the most prominent was the random start room, which was actually quite easy (we did it) because little did they realize, all the exits/hallways to the rooms are unique, so it's not nearly as hard as the contest designers thought it to be. Here's a little more background on what the actual contest is like: Saturday is qualifying, and many people are completely disorganized. Many don't even qualify. They fill the trinity gym, and the sheer amounts of extenstion cords, people scrambling to find parts, bossy parents instructing their 6th grader how to do things is rediculous. Unfortunately, the number of really innovative robots is sort of dissapointingly low, but the ones that are new are impressive. It's really quite a spectacle. The actual running of the contest takes about 3 hours, but neither my friend nor I nor the Trinity team really got any sleep the saturday night before. Significant portions of code for our and i suspect all of the robots are written within hours or sometimes between runs. It's a completely draining event, but very much so worth it. I hope to compete next year, if at all possible, and I encourage everyone to come at watch, as it really is fun! http://campinappropriate.8m.com
Once upon a time...
I shall create an army of flame-throwing robots, so that the delicate balance of robot power is not upset.
I competed in this competition 2 years ago (a search in google for Trinity and 1999 can still find my picture), and thought it was a great competeion. My high school, Council Rock (also represented this year) has an excelent Technology Club, which encourages students to develop robots for both this and the Penn State Trailblazers competition. We used HandyBoards (MIT's mobile robot controler) and legos to build our robots, along with a variety of sensors and servos.
My year, we had to chose between doing the Trnity Competion and US First competition. We chose Trinity for a few reasons:
- we didnt have a corporate sponsor
- First is not autonomous robots - they are remote controlled. Also, there is usually a "human factor" - a person may be able to throw things, etc
- many teams end up just letting the large corporate sponsor do all the work
I'm quite glad we skipped First in favor of trinity. It was a very enjoyable (and challenging - read some of the rules from the website for getting bonuses) experience.
Monday is a horrible way to spend 1/7 of your life.
I mean come on! Do you have any idea how late for class I'm running?
-Denor
I'd like to log a complaint about the choice of the article title. I thought it was talking about an R-rated sequel to "The Matrix."
[Note to humor-impaired moderators, this was a joke]
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Is for smokers trying to quit. I can imagine how much better my trying to quit smoking would go if everytime I tried to light a cigarette it got put out and I got a facefull of C02 to go with it.
That is until I got smart and replaced the C02 with N02 and enjoyed it a lot more....
Papa Legba come and open the gate