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. 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
2. 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 6th April 2006 - Rehan

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
   • Controller - Two robots adaptively rotate to overcome a hill
2. Robotics Group Admin
   • Rehan - Common Interface Wiki Page

Reading material

• None

People who will be absent

• MarcoD

Wednesday 13th April 2006 - Anders

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
   • Controller design
   • Palet lifting and transport
   • Evolving self-assembly
2. Robotics Group Admin
   • E-pucks

Reading material

None

People who will be absent

• MarcoD, Rehan

Wednesday 19th April 2006 - Elio

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
   • I presents the results of a series of simulation concerning the evolution of controllers for heterogeneous robots required to coordinate their actions in order to approach a target. This work, carried out by myself, Christos Ampatzis, Federico Vicentini and Marco Dorigo, has been recently submitted to SAB06.

1. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material If you are interested in doing some reading about this subject, you can find in my room printed copies of the paper submitted to the conference.

People who will be absent

Wednesday 26th April 2006 - Christos

I will talk about current work on the evolution of communication for heterogeneous robots, trying to link it with older work and also with what I have in mind as future goal, but also on a new self-assembly method we are working on with Anders, where the NN takes care of everything, without use of camera. I will also elaborate on the doors the latter effort might open once successful.

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
2. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent

Results

Wednesday 3rd May 2006 - Roderich

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
   • I'm going to rehearse two presentations that have to be prepared for the 2006 IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics & Automation (ICRA), which is held in two weeks in Florida. Each presentation should last 13 minutes + discussion.
   • Abstract: This paper addresses the cooperative transport of a heavy object by a group of mobile robots. We present a system in which group members lacking knowledge about the position of the transport target exploit physical interactions with other members of the group that have such knowledge. This is the first such system to achieve a performance superior to that of a passive caster. The system is fully decentralized and the information flow between the robots is limited to physical interactions. The robots have no knowledge about their relative positions. A comprehensive experimental study with up to six physical robots confirms the effectiveness, reliability, and robustness of the system. Finally, the system is examined in rough terrain conditions.
   • Abstract: We present a first attempt to accomplish a simple object manipulation task using the self-reconfigurable robotic system swarm-bot. The number of modular entities involved, their global shape or size and their internal structure are not pre-determined, but result from a self-organized process in which the modules autonomously grasp each other and/or an object. The modules are autonomous in perception, control, action, and power. We present quantitative results, obtained with six physical modules, that confirm the utility of self-assembling robots in a concrete task.

1. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

These are the two papers. However, the presentations should be self-contained.

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~rgross/icra06_568_final.pdf

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~rgross/icra06_922_final.pdf

People who will be absent

Wednesday 10th May 2006 - Shervin

Agenda

1. Presentation / Discussion
   • I am going to present an extension of my chaining controller. In the original version robots just form chains from the nest. In the new controller I introduce a very simple "prey enhancement" mechanism where the robots activate their LEDs when they perceive the nest, and in this way enhance the area in which the prey can be perceived. I present the results from an experiment I conducted in simulation.
2. Robotics Group Admin

Reading material

People who will be absent