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Mapping Interior Spaces With Robots And GIS
Roland Piquepaille writes "In an article about GIS and Robotics, Directions Magazine reports that architects and other professionals can now use spatially intelligent robots to collect interior space data. With such mapping robots, it's possible to capture accurate data for over 10,000 square meters per day and to easily integrate it with existing software. The article doesn't mention the sources for its illustrations about these robotic systems, so I thought I'd point them out: a company in Maine called Penobscot Bay Media. You'll find more details and pictures about these mapping robots at ZDNet."
...was in colonoscopies, but all of the patients so far have died of massive internal bleeding.
pretty useless
How long before the robots start telling each other the same thing?
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Coralized so as not to /. their servera tial-Robotics.wmv
15 MB http://www.penbaymedia.com.nyud.net:8080/demos/Sp
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
this could have as easily been categorized as a "your rights" issue. how cool that they can now map out where people spend their time. i'm sure they'll use that information for the betterment of all of us.
Can I have my home as a CS:Source map now, please ?
Seriously though, I don't see many uses for this isolated tech. It is, however, necessary to have something like this in 'intelligent' robots.
Looks like these are descendants of Shakey the Robot. Funny how Shakey's not mentioned anywhere in those links...
End transmission.
Impressive! This could be very useful in a lot of situations.. Keeping in mind that this is the very generation, there could very well be later generations that could map rooms in mere minutes, and then other ones to map rubble in minutes.. then when disaster strikes, in goes the robots to map stuff out, and people to follow.
Also.. its one step closer to our favorite person ever made.
DATA! WOOT!
For those Firefox users that haven't seen it yet, here's the Greasemonkey script I wrote to hide Roland Piquepaille stories from Slashdot: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/5738
Enjoy
As always, we must look to the porn industry to find a way to make money from this new technology before it trickles down (sic) to the average user.
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It seems like yesterday they couldn't even find their way around specially designed parcours, and today they're mapping whole office buildings like a pro.
Is someone trying get to the topic of mathematics?
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Indoors you don't have gps, so you have to rely on other sensor input. An article on IEEE mentioned robots with radar which created small map segments which were stiched to create a big map.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
As a small semestrial academic project, I worked on a different kind of mapping project which uses a large number of very simple (and cheap) robots instead of a small number of expensive robots like in this article.
Each robot is aware of its location through odometry (measuring the distance traveled by both the of the bot's wheels) and collision detection using, in our case, a rotating straw due to the fact we were limited to Lego Mindstorms.
Using odometry inserts a lot of error to the calculations. To counter these errors, the robots communicate over a short distance (touching distance) and average their expected location and heading.
In theory, and simulation, the algorithm proved very successful. Especially for a large number of agents.
In practice the errors were too large compared to the very small number of agents (4) we had at our disposal.
The project page.
And the simulation applet, written with NetLogo.
I wonder if they use such averaging algorithms with these robots aswell.
^_^
If one of these rolled into your cubicle/office/building, would you:
/.er chosing this one, I'll go ahead and include it:
a) punt it
2) hack it
c) disassemble it for useful parts
d) melt it down for useful chemicals and metals
and although I can't imagine a
e) let it map the interior of your personal space
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
I've been thinking about implementing Time Difference of Arrival plus echo-locationing to do a very similar thing. Plus, this method could be used to scan in 3D with ease. Not to mention a number of other interesting applications, such as beamforming plus distance awareness.
The very same code could be used for EM for a sort of total situation awareness radar, passive and active.
Next up: death ray! Mwahahahaah!
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For everyone else: They suggest that you could use the robot as a sentry to patrol buildings and detect movement/changes in the environment. Which makes me wonder what its runtime is.
I don't really get this. Would using a robot really have any advantages over building a sensor network? Seems like you could build and deploy a lot of sensors for the cost of a robot, and have much better coverage besides.
Plus, a robot following any sort of predictable rounds is vulnerable to being diverted or otherwise disabled, or simply avoided; a network of independent sensors is more robust and harder to avoid.
I could see a use for robots to deploy sensors, however; mapping as they move around, and building a sensor mesh behind them as they go.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
With such mapping robots, it's possible to capture accurate data for over 10,000 square meters per day and to easily integrate it with existing software.
i followed the link and all i've been able to surmise is that they're not talking about Google Image Search.
From the article it looks a lot like an ActivMedia Pioneer with a SICK laser which you can control through Player/Stage and includes all of the mapping algrothims, still have to do work to make it work however.
This looks like a fairly standard reasearch project for undergrad student, player/stage is littered with uni students asking questions about using these type of modules
I am not suprised by the lack of accuracy in the shown map, you normally get a lot of errors due to the robot not accurately figuring out where it is everytime it turns even slightly. Onboard odometry is never that good.
If you want something slightly more cutting edge, yet still old look at the mapping out of something like Kurt3D
37 - what does it stand for really...
Anyone remember the cartridge for the 2600 that did this with a roving robot, and drew the walls on your T.V.?
Hmmm.... okay. So these robots map the interior of large office buildings and the like. What I want to know is: what owner, manager, or tenant of a large office building, worth hundreds of thousand to millions of dollars, does not already have an accurate blueprint? Hell, in most cases you can get copies from the city for a few bucks!
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