Robotics weekly meetings

Purpose

1. Community. Keep everyone updated as to what other work is going on in the lab
2. Research. Cross germination. Get feedback. Get help on problems. Get ideas.
3. Admin. Lab administration.

Format

1. Iridia Administration (0 - 15 mins)
2. Presentation & Discussion (30 - 50 mins)
   • Work you have been doing
   • Reading you have been doing in the context of your work
   • Other reading on something you are passionate about
3. Robotics Group Administration (0 - 15 mins)

Try and make your session as involving as possible for everyone:

• Send round material to be read beforehand.
• Ask people before the meeting what aspects of your work / reading they would like to know about or discuss.
• Think about implications of what you are presenting for the research direction of the lab as a whole - methodologies, technologies etc.

Timing & Attendance

The weekly meetings ALWAYS take place on

Wednesdays at 14.30

Unless:

• A given Wednesday is a public holiday, or
• Something very important (like a Ph.D. defense) is overlapping.

If either should happen the meeting is postponed to the next day.

Please indicate on this wiki page if you are not going to be able to attend a meeting (no later than the Friday before).

If you forget to note your absence in advance you will be severely punished and will be forced to buy a nice, big cake for the following meeting.

Previous Meetings

See Minutes and agendas from previous meetings.

Wednesday 26th October - Anders

Presentation / Discussion Topics

Dependability and fault-tolerance in Robotics:

• What is fault-tolerance and dependability?
• What has been done in robotics?
• How could fault tolerance be implemented in a swarm robotics context?

Administration Issues

• Coffee machine
• New documents on the Wiki.
• Next week...
• The new e-pucks
• Simulators and swarm-bot interfaces

People who will be absent

Elio, Rodi, Christos

Results

Download Presentation(PDF)

• General: The topics on the agenda, which are of general interest are moved to the beginning of the meeting, so that non-robotics people can attend at a fixed hour each week.
• Coffee machine:
  • Marco buys a new one when he comes across a good, new coffee machine (suggestions are very welcome)
  • Mauro is in charge of sending the current, broken machine to someone who can repair it.
• New Wiki-pages:
  • IRIDIA Technical reports - how to publish technical reports at IRIDIA + LaTeX styles etc.
  • Access to Digital Libraries
  • When something happens to the s-bots (French, pdf) - A document list common hardware problems and their solutions. Can also be found in the SBOT FAQ and the SBOT STATUS sections.
• Wiki security: For certain parts of the Wiki it would be convenient to have access control, so that only people from IRIDIA can access those pages. Anders will look into that.
• E-pucks: All the available info on the e-pucks will be put on the Wiki.
• Sbot/simulator interfaces: Rehan is going to create a repository for the common sbot interface and it is going to be implemented in TwoDee.
• OMiss simulator: Rehan is going to create a Wiki page on checking out and compiling OMiss (the new simulator based on ODE).

Wednesday 2nd November - Rehan

Agenda

1. IRIDIA Admin
   • Coffee Machine
   • New Wiki Pages
   • Next week...
2. Presentation / Discussion
   • What is robotic pattern formation?
   • Potential applications using the Swarm Bot robotic platform
   • Discussion / feedback on my research direction
3. Robotics Group Admin
   • Sbot / Simulator programmatic interfaces
   • Buying a computer+flatscreen for the robot room (or taking one that is not used)
   • Any spare monitor for Rodi?

Location Ping pong room

Reading Material

• There is no reading material for this weeks presentation

People who will be absent

Elio, Thomas

Results

• Coffee machine: Various options available. Ciro is taking care of calling the people in charge of the ULB expresso machine deal.
• New wiki pages:
  • OMiss - The ODE based simulator
  • The e-puck page
• Career developement plans online: Alex is going to propose a technology for the next meeting, which allows us to have up-to-date career development plans online, but only accessible by the student in question and his/her supervisor.
• Arena camera: Federico is going to look into camera software and hardware for next weeks meeting (for the arena, since the movies shot with the current camera are of poor quality.
• OMiss with 2D dynamics: We all believe that having the OMiss work with a 2D dynamics engine as well as ODE would be a good idea for many experiments. It might take too much time to implement though and no one seemed too keen on actually implementing it. We will see at the next meeting.

Wednesday 9th November - Federico

Agenda

1. IRIDIA Admin
2. Presentation / Discussion
3. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent

N/A

Wednesday 16th November - Elio

Agenda

1. IRIDIA Admin
2. Presentation / Discussion
3. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent

Marco

Wednesday 23rd November - Christos

Agenda

1. IRIDIA Admin
2. Presentation / Discussion
3. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent

Ciro (holiday --> no cake, but maybe a havana cigar...)

Wednesday 30th November - Shervin

Agenda

1. IRIDIA Admin
2. Presentation / Discussion
3. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent

Ciro (holiday --> no talk!!!)