Programming a Local GPS Navigation System into a Mobile Robot

Posted by circlechess on May 25, 2008, 4:14 am

Hello World,

I am in a college robotics club and I would like to make a robot that
can navigate locally (like in one corner of a room to another or from
one room to another, for starters). It would be awesome if it could
respond to voice commands or simple inputs like "office" or "commons"
and be able to know where to go. I would like to be able to program a
"mini map" of the environment or create some way of the robot moving
around it's environment and "learning" where things are located
(perhaps via sensors and memory of location points?).

I am not exactly sure where to start or how realistic this is. I
think Rodney Brooks at the MIT AI Lab has worked on similar things
using mobile and walking robots. I suppose this might be similar, but
I am just not sure where to start in getting this going and what the
prerequisite knowledge to undertaking this would be.

I have some programming experience in C++ and will be exploring Scheme/
Lisp in the coming weeks so I am flexible to whatever language is
needed to most efficiently get this going. I would like the language
not to be too limited, however. I currently have a Laptop with Linux
installed onto it that I was planning to use as the robot "brain" and
hook this up to little motors and wheels, etc. on some sort of base/
platform that I can use to program it to move. I would need to get
sensors so that it doesn't bump into things as it is moving about.

I would ideally like it to be able to have a decent map of how to get
here and there while also using the sensors to do obstacle avoidance.

Also-- are there any competitions, national or international, that
this type of robot could be enrolled? It would be nice to have some
type of standard/structure/format to guide me/my club as we try to
build this robot.

Cheers!

-Yama

Posted by Dave on May 25, 2008, 7:51 am

Google is your friend. These topics come up frequently, and a little
homework will uncover much information. However, in robotics, as many other
fields, what may at first seem to be a trivial problem often turns out to be
much much harder than you thought !

I'm not trying to discourage you, merely suggesting that you should first
research what others have achieved or failed to do. If all else fails, there
are actually books on most of these topics...

have fun !

Dave

circlechess wrote:

> Hello World,
> I am in a college robotics club and I would like to make a robot that
> can navigate locally (like in one corner of a room to another or from
> one room to another, for starters). It would be awesome if it could

Posted by cadcoke4 on May 25, 2008, 9:18 pm

I will mention the Rovio robot by Wowe (makers of RoboSapian). It is
not out yet, but should be out later this year. It features an indoor
navigation system that is based on a camera on the robot that is aimed
up. On the base station is a LED that projects a pattern onto the
ceiling.

There are some videos demonstrating it on YouTube when it was shown at
the CES show.

I don't know if the Rovio will be programmable or if the navigation
system will be easily hackable. The navigation system is originaly
by Evolution Robotics http://www.evolution.com/products/northstar/

Joe Dunfee

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