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Search, Navigate, and Actuate lab course

The lab course of the first year AI Search, Navigate, and Actuate lab course consists of controlling a robotic arm whose job it is to move chess pieces. Goals of the lab course are to become acquainted with working in real world situations and to learn to apply several robotics techniques. The lab course is split in three parts: first you should solve a chess endgame "king and queen vs. king", next you should plan a path for the gripper of the arm and after that calculate the corresponding poses of the arm joints.

We will be using a UMI RTX robotic arm manufactured by Universal Machine Intelligence. Its serial number is 173. See this short video (divx, 11MB) (made by Niels Out) to see the robot arm in action and to get a basic idea of what the course is about.

Useful information:

Slightly less useful information:

People:

News:

  • 2008-06-16 11:07:26 +0200

    In IK.java there is a comment saying you can use testIK to test your implementation. Don't do this. Just compare your code with the given class file IKstandard.class. You can do this by using playchess (and doing some configuring) or by hand:

    java IKstandard
    cat joints.txt
    java IK
    cat joints.txt

  • 2008-06-09 13:00:19 +0200

    hier wat richtlijnen voor het instellen van Eclipse:

    Eclipse instellen:
    Sla de .java bestanden ergens op. Start Eclipse op en maak een nieuwe project aan. Rechtsklik op de projectnaam en kies import. Kies general -> filesystem. Kies de folder waar je de .java bestanden hebt opgeslagen en vink de drie .java bestanden aan. Druk op finish. Er zitten nu waarschijnlijk nog fouten in het project, klik daarom op project->properties->Java Build Path->Libraries->Add Class Folder->Create New Folder->advanced->vink "link to folder in file system" aan -> browse -> File System -> opt -> stud -> robotics -> class -> druk een heleboel keer op OK.

    Javadoc instellen:
    In Eclipse: rechtsklik op 'class' (staat als het goed is nu in je project') kies properties, klik op Javadoc Location en vul bij Javadoc Location Path het volgende in: file:/opt/stud/robotics/doc/

    Met dank aan Wouter(2007)

  • 2008-06-03 14:55:06 +0200

    You can also start the endgame solver from within Prolog. Start prolog, consult chess.pl and enter startRook or startPawn. You can alter the board.gch file for different board settings and change forcingTree.pl for debuging.

  • 2008-06-03 13:19:37 +0200

    Okay: a final source of information to come up with a winning strategy. You can use the gui xboard (on the older installation only, newer pcs don't have it installed....) to investigate the given board-setting. A file with the setting that can be read by xboard can be downloaded here. Run "xboard -timeControl 0:1 -loadPositionFile board.xb" in a shell and (for example) select Mode, Machine White..

  • 2008-06-03 12:42:27 +0200

    Another source of information for finding a winning strategy. On this site you can try out strategies.

  • 2008-06-03 10:37:06 +0200

    A video explaining how to solve a pawn-king vs king endgame can be found here .

  • 2008-05-21 11:30:48 +0200

    The birth of a totale restyled webpage for this year's lab course.


UMI RTX in action.