Carlos Jaramillo's
Distributed Research Experience as Undergraduate (Summer 2009)
WEEKLY JOURNAL
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Journal
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Progress Report Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10 |
| Tips |
Progress Report (Q & A):
| Question | Answer |
| Please give a brief description of your project | After becoming acquainted with the design and functionality of the open-source project " Player/Stage", which already provides a useful programing platform for certain robots, such as the Pioneer and iRobot's Roomba, besides providing the capability to simulate available interfaces in virtual worlds through Stage (2D) and Gazebo(3D), we want to expand the implementation of drivers for other robots that we have access to, like it's the case of the IPRE's Scribbler and the Surveyor SRV-1 (with ARM-7 processor). Thus, my mentor has asked me to focus my research work on the development of these drivers that will be used as plugins for Player so we can finally use the API to develop portable and reusable controllers (brains) for these and other educational robots. |
| How many weeks have you worked so far, and how many weeks do you have left? | I have worked for over 6 weeks, which puts me right on schedule to complete my 10 weeks of research experience by the end of August. |
| What is the status of your project? (include what you have accomplished so far and what you expect to accomplish in the rest of the summer) | So far, I have become comfortable with the required process that involves writing Player/Stage drivers as I have stumbled upon a few papers showing examples of how to do this, besides the excellent comments within other drivers' source code that are included with the Player package. I decided to begin writing the driver for the first generation of surveyor robots SRV-1 with an ARM-7 processor that communicates with the controlling computer via radio. The surveyor also has a low-resolution camera and four infra-red sensors. This 4-wheeled robot has two treads on each side that improve its traction on rescue arenas. We want to use the camera as its main sensor that can also interface Player/Stage for localization and mapping capabilities such as SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping). I have made some progress on interfacing the Surveyor's motors via Player with a plug-in driver. However, there is a lot of polishing to do on this driver, as well as the development of the camera and IR interfaces. Based on what I can learn from writing the Surveyor's drivers, it would be easier to develop Player drivers for the Scribbler robot, which also has a camera that we would like to interface. |
| What has been your biggest challenge so far? | I have been challenged with debugging and troubleshooting problems encountered during the installation of some software tools that we need in order to test our robots in several ways. However, the advantage of basing our research mainly on open-source projects is that it allows us to look directly into the source code so that we can learn from these different implementations of robot/hardware programing. |
| What is the most exciting thing that has happened so far? | Our trip to RoboCup 2009 in Austria allowed me to appreciate the existing development on robot platforms that are being used for urban search and rescue (USAR). I had the chance to talk to a few Senior participants of the RoboCup Rescue League, from whom I witnessed some use of Player/Stage for the purpose of blindly (only with the help of sensors) remote-controlling these rescue robots. |
| What is your working environment? For example, how frequently do you meet your mentor, the grad students in your group, others in the department, etc? Are you working on your project alone, with another undergrad, or with a graduate student. Have you attended any research talks? | The Agents Lab at Brooklyn College is where we spend most of our time doing research and directly interacting with the available robot platforms. The work in our lab can be divided into several different, but related, areas such as multi-agent interaction (swarms), simulation and learning, mechanism design, interactive learning technologies, and educational robotics. There are other ongoing projects being funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that in their majority involve graduate and PhD students from the Department of Computer and Information Science at Brooklyn College. My direct mentor, Elizabeth Sklar, and Prof. Simon Parsons, are the most active research professors in the lab during this summer. I am also sharing some research experience with other DREU student,Andres Concepcion, who also participated as a volunteer for the RoboCup Junior event where we were able to attend some talks given at this International Symposium on a wide range of topics on robotics research. |
| What is your housing and roommate situation? | I'm currently commuting from home to my mentor's institution by car. Although it is a long ride, the experience of the research is well worth it. |
| Is there anything else that you would like us to know about your experience? | We have experienced an assortment of tasks during the experience, from doing academic research on the lab to participating as volunteers for the RoboCup 2009 event and as student ambassadors at the Bridges Workshop for high school students funded by the NSF at Brooklyn College. Hence, I can say this has been a rich experience since academic work is not only searching for answers but also being an active member of other communities that pursue the growing trend of improving education with the use of robots and other technologies. |
| Is there anything you would like to tell your mentor (these comments, if any, will be forwarded to your mentor)? | I always appreciate my mentor's wise guidance throughout this research experience that has opened my eyes to the exciting world of robotics. |