Having just watched the video Lego teams up with Microsoft Robotics on Channel 10, it reminds me the Lego project in my final year of undergraduate and the AIBO Dog Project I have done during the Summers of 2003 and 2004.
There were 6 people in the team for Lego project and I was the main developer. It is a wheel based robotic vehicle built using Lego Mindstorms, and it is able to travel through a maze using its light sensors at two sides and one touch senser in the front. The algorithm in the vehicle keep obtaining sensor information repeatly, once initiated. It compares the data from two light sensors and aligns itself in the middle of the road. The touch sensor basically tells if it is blocked. Click image on the left or here for the video.
2 software engineering principles was targeted when doing the implementation:
- Something bad will never happen.
- Something good will eventually happen.
To ensure this, the algorithm checks the timer and counts how long has elapsed since the touch sensor last triggered. Since the maze is finite and it is impossible the vehicle is not blocked forever. If so, the only possibility is that the vehicle is stucked, causing running forward no more. Thus, if the waiting time is long enough, a time out will be signaled and the vehicle will move back a little bit and try a different angle in a random degree. Therefore, something bad (blocked forever) will never happen, and something good (escaped when stucked) will eventually happen.
In contrast, AIBO Dog Project is more interesting. I created an software suite for the AIBO robot system which allows to do several things, such as
- Head controlling in real-time by pointing devices.
- Motion playing back, such as walking forward, backward, turning, etc.
- Audio streaming and full screen video streaming
The suite contains a server, to be run on AIBO, and a client, to be run on the remote PC. They communicate in TCP/IP once the server is connected by a client. Unforunately, there is no video for the project. Pictures are here:
Today, from iRobot to Canada Arm; from manual controlled to fully automated, robots are not just a focus in education and entertainment. The potential robot market is slowly opening and there are companies interested in this new business, such as Robotics Studio just announced from Microsoft. Who else?
曾经很想创业，想做自己想做的事情。比如实现一些想法，然后卖出去。当若干年之后的这一段时间开始认真考虑这些想法的时候，才发现自己太嫩，才发现原来自己对很多方面的认识确实天真。这个世界变化太快，又有太多东西要学。仅凭创意，却对风险投资、公司结构、市场营销、法律条款等创业的重要组成部分一无所知的话，想实现自己的理想，确实还太不现实。同样，有很多其他学科领域，但对技术细节和科技趋势了解甚少的追梦青年，也会从中遇到这样的困惑。月
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