Programmers: I Have A Challenge For You

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by pSYeNCe

This is precisely why I won't be able to accept the challenge. This last year I had one day to really test the code nonstop- all the other days I'd have it for a few minutes after grabbing it from the build team. I'd love to participate in this challenge- I believe it's a great one that would give any participant a lot of insight into programming- I can't due to insane time constraints. It's not plausible without the time to test.

You know what, I will just be the team leader and have a "software first" mentality. Just recruit more programmers. I would have an army of programmers, plus, I am the biggest and strongest on the team

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

You know what, I will just be the team leader and have a "software first" mentality. Just recruit more programmers.

The typical problem is not a lack of programming resources. It's a lack of robot.

There are two ways the TechnoKats have successfully dealt with this problem. One is to build into the schedule a set of "programming only" sessions. We did this a couple of years ago, with the programming group having absolute priority on the robot a couple of evenings a week starting in Week 3 of the build. The mechanical and electrical groups were denied permission to work on the robot during those times (though they were encouraged to be present in case something broke). This worked out great because we built a practice 'bot at the same time, so "the robot" was actually able to be used by two groups simultaneously.

The other way is to finish the robot well in advance of ship date so that the programmers have plenty of time with it. This also has benefits for the drivers, giving them plenty of practice time. And probably the best thing about being done early is that there's plenty of time to break the robot.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

You know what, I will just be the team leader and have a "software first" mentality. Just recruit more programmers. I would have an army of programmers, plus, I am the biggest and strongest on the team

That should help, but by now I bet you realize the constraint here isn't whether or not you can get people typing fast enough. It's not work that just needs to be chugged through.

[Doug Leppard]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

You know what, I will just be the team leader and have a "software first" mentality. Just recruit more programmers. I would have an army of programmers, plus, I am the biggest and strongest on the team

If you had an army of hardware guys would the robot be buildt faster? Usually not in fact it can slow the process.

I agree usually the robot hardware is not ready in time to do 15 seconds of a game much less 2 minutes.

[Doug Leppard]

Maybe this has been already suggested I haven't read all the posts.

How about having a post championships competition, like IRI where the robots are totally autonomous. Maybe have it at IRI as one of the vents.

This way there is more time to work on the robot post season.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Doug Leppard

If you had an army of hardware guys would the robot be buildt faster? Usually not in fact it can slow the process.

Yes, adding workers can slow a process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month may be of some interest to you.

[davidthefat]

I am bumping this one up cause I honestly did not want to start another thread and as the kickoff gets closer, I thought people should see this.

I found a solution to the image processing problem.
http://microcontrollershop.com/produ...ucts_id=352 9

No battery: Legal
4 USB ports = Good
Runs Linux (The Arm 9 Linux uses 32 mb of ram, and this has 32 mb ram... So IDK...)


I realized I can not use the PS3 or a PC due to lack of voltage generated form the batteries... Don't they need a minimum of 110v? and the battery is 12 v.

It says it supports up to 4 webcams, but I do not know how well it can perform while processing images.
I can either just process the data and send the raw data obtained from the camera to the cRio and process the logic there or process the logic on the board. Thats a minor detail that can be experimented with.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I realized I can not use the PS3 or a PC due to lack of voltage generated form the batteries... Don't they need a minimum of 110v? and the battery is 12 v.

That's not exactly true. They need 110V of AC power, and the battery supplies 12 V of DC power. It's not really a matter of simply "oh, 110 is bigger than 12, guess I'm screwed". You could use a power inverter, though I don't think power inverters are FIRST legal...

Have you written any successful programming logic since your last post?

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by Chris is me

That's not exactly true. They need 110V of AC power, and the battery supplies 12 V of DC power. It's not really a matter of simply "oh, 110 is bigger than 12, guess I'm screwed". You could use a power inverter, though I don't think power inverters are FIRST legal...

Have you written any successful programming logic since your last post?

I honestly have not done any programming since summer.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

I honestly have not done any programming since summer.

When an artist works on something for too long, nothing about it seems to be good enough. It isn't until he leaves it alone for a while before returning that he can see what truly needs to be worked on.

--Me

[theprgramerdude]

Agreed with the above. I backed off of it, and instead have been studying the bigger picture of how to build a decent robot, as well as some of the sensors available for input. There's no reason to try all autonomous anyways if your robot just flat-out sucks.

[davidthefat]

Well I plan to get a hold of that GadgetPC sometime soon and start working on the cameras and stuff. I really wanted to try parallel processing with multiple cores, but I guess I can hold off for a while.

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

Well I plan to get a hold of that GadgetPC sometime soon and start working on the cameras and stuff. I really wanted to try parallel processing with multiple cores, but I guess I can hold off for a while.

Stick with what you know, especially that which you know but don't know that you know. Think about how you think. How do you tell what an object is? How do you know if it needs to be avoided? In humans, image processing occurs in the occipital lobes of the brain which communicate with the frontal lobes to determine what everything is based on stored information. In your system, the GadgetPC seems to be equivalent to the occipital lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes would be the CRIO, possibly the FPGA. This involves a lot of boolean logic.

is it a wall?
yes
{avoid}
no
{is it a robot?
   yes
   {do something, maybe add an extra "is it an opposing robot?" test}
   no
   {is it a scoring object?
        yes
        {pick it up}
        no
        {is it a goal?
             yes
             {score,  if scoring objects are in possession}
             no
             {is it part of the field that can be driven over?
                   yes
                   {ignore}
                   no
                   {avoid}
}}}

Another important part of the brain is the parietal lobe--> processes other sensory information and builds maps of the environment

Motion would be controlled by another part of the system that uses all of this information gathered by the three "lobes" and maps out the best route to take.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**note** this isn't exactly how the human brain works, I'm just simplifying it to fit the application better and to avoid confusion of some people, myself included.
___________________________________________
I'm sorry if this is hard to follow or makes no sense, I had a hard time wording it, or even figuring out what I was trying to say, maybe I should take a break and come back to it later

[davidthefat]

Originally Posted by PAR_WIG1350

Stick with what you know, especially that which you know but don't know that you know. Think about how you think. How do you tell what an object is? How do you know if it needs to be avoided? In humans, image processing occurs in the occipital lobes of the brain which communicate with the frontal lobes to determine what everything is based on stored information. In your system, the GadgetPC seems to be equivalent to the occipital lobes of the brain. The frontal lobes would be the CRIO, possibly the FPGA. This involves a lot of boolean logic.

is it a wall?
yes
{avoid}
no
{is it a robot?
   yes
   {do something, maybe add an extra "is it an opposing robot?" test}
   no
   {is it a scoring object?
        yes
        {pick it up}
        no
        {is it a goal?
             yes
             {score,  if scoring objects are in possession}
             no
             {is it part of the field that can be driven over?
                   yes
                   {ignore}
                   no
                   {avoid}
}}}

Another important part of the brain is the parietal lobe--> processes other sensory information and builds maps of the environment

Motion would be controlled by another part of the system that uses all of this information gathered by the three "lobes" and maps out the best route to take.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
**note** this isn't exactly how the human brain works, I'm just simplifying it to fit the application better and to avoid confusion of some people, myself included.
___________________________________________
I'm sorry if this is hard to follow or makes no sense, I had a hard time wording it, or even figuring out what I was trying to say, maybe I should take a break and come back to it later

I am assuming the bumper system is going to be mandatory again, so I thought that I can just do a color detection of the blob and decide with that info if that robot is an enemy or not. Also for detecting the objects, I have to think a bit more about that. I thought that just comparing colors is simple enough, but that can be very shoddy.

I been looking at the Machine Learning lectures by Andrew Ng @Stanford, I think that will give me a better insight on this.

I totally understand what you are saying, my mind thinks the same. What I was hoping I could do was use the PS3, but that does not seem likely.

There are 8 SPEs, only 7 are available, but thats fine. I was thinking each SPE was to be responsible for one part. All the SPEs can access the images without writing to it, so no problem there since all the SPEs would be only reading. Like 1 SPE can do the color detection, another do the distances of the objects, another do object recognition, and ect. They all relay that info to the PPE which will then compile the info and then do the logic. Then the PS3, through the ethernet, sends the instructions to the cRio.

Now that seems like a stretch, but honestly I like to aim high. I am 1/4 through the MIT PS3 lectures, I have learned so much just from that LOL.

If the PS3 is legal and the DC to AC inverters are legal, I can go ahead with this. Only problem, its my only PS3, do I want to potentially risk it getting crushed or something? I have 2 options too, run linux or go the homebrew way? I got a 60GB Japanese launch PS3, I still run linux on it, I have not updated it. The linux libraries for the PS3 are well documented and very thorough (IBM wrote them), but I would assume the homebrew route would have incomplete and shady libraries since its in its infancy. The down side of the linux on PS3 is the boot time, takes at least 45 seconds to boot up. The game OS only takes 2 seconds.

[apalrd]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

... takes at least 45 seconds to boot up.

That's about as fast as the cRio anyway (seriously, it takes forever to boot)