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 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

Download Presentation (PDF)

• 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. Presentation / Discussion
   • ER approach for real world apllication: reference framework for vehicle controller
   • Some requirements in my navigation task: patrolling, collision avoidance, obstacle avoidance
   • Multirobot context: testing the Quinn experiment. Simulation and results with real s-bots
   • Discussion/feedback on tools/approaches selected and on future work
2. Robotics Group Admin
   • Arena camera
   • Common interface
   • OMiss and 2D kinematics

Reading material

1. Reference for my simulator benchmarking: the Quinn experiment @ Sussex (pdf)
2. Reference for automotive navigation usign evolutionary approach (pdf)

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

Things we should talk about

• we should use templeet in the wiki to make it run faster

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!!!)