Programming Languages Used for SRR

I asked at the SRR Challenge about the languages and vision processing used by each team. Here is what I found:

Team                     Language                       Vision Processing

Intrepid                         C++ / Matlab                                          

Kuukulgur                     C++                                          OpenCV

Mystic                           C++                                          RobotRealm

SpacePride                    RoboRealm state machine          RoboRealm

Survey                           C++, Python                             OpenCV

Middleman                     LabView                                   LabView

UCSC                           C/C++                                      OpenCV

Waterloo                       C++, Python                                            

WPI                              C++                                                             

Wunderkammer             Python                                      ROS vision packages

Here is a rough synopsis of how the teams fared:

Team Intrepid was the first to leave and return to the platform. It thought it picked up the sample but actually did not.

Team Kuukulgur (it means Moon or Lunar Rover), a demonstration team, from Estonia, was the first to pick up the sample but did not make it back to the starting platform. They had the slickest looking robots but then three of the team are mechanical engineers. They brought a swarm of four but one failed so only three took the field.

Team Waterloo, a demonstration team from Canada, also picked up the sample and were the first to return it to the starting platform but the sample was just outside the 1.5 meter square area. It did not hurt them financially since they were a demonstration team and thus ineligible for the NASA money. They did receive $500 from WPI for picking up the sample.

Team Survey won the Phase I competition this year and will take home $6,000 for that effort. ($5,000 from NASA and $1,000 from WPI.)

Team Mystic Lake, myself, did not do that well but I consider it a "building year", to borrow from sports team terminology. Mystic Two traveled the furthest distance of a robot in the SRR to date. It just kept trekking. I proved out much of my code and the ability of my very small rovers to handle the terrain.

SpacePride fielded two rovers but were unable to accomplish much. Their software developer dropped out near the end so they had to scramble to get something working via a state-machine in RoboRealm.

I will update the table if more information becomes available.

Just after I returned from the challenge, an email on a robotics mailing list asked for advice on languages to use for robots. Since I had almost all of the information posted above I put it into a reply and received a nice thanks in return. Hopefully someone will find this interesting.

(Updated UCSC - UC Santa Cruz from comment. Thanks.)
(Updated Middleman aka RoBear from comment. Thanks.)

Rover Names

When I got the 4 computers for the rovers I still had not come up with a good names for them. Loading Windows XP I simply called the first one Mystic One. That led to the others being Two, Three, and Four. The more I used that name I liked it and started referring to them collectively as The Mystics. That is their name now and I will use if for the team name next year: Team Mystic.

The name obviously comes from Mystic Lake Software, my DBA. After Shari and I decided I was retired - I promised to have a warm supper on the table for her every night - I wanted to create a DBA just in case I did pick up some kind of work. Behind our house - and across a street - is a small park with a lake - Mystic Lake. That felt like a good name so I used it by simply adding the "Software". It conveys that aura of mystery that pervades software.

Back from the SRR, links and an EMMY!

Back home after an awesome experience at the 2013 NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge. I posted on Facebook to capture the activities of myself and the other teams. It was an intense week and with seven days of travel involved getting there and back I am still not ready to jump full speed into much of anything.

If you visit the Mystic Lake FB page take a look at the pages I liked from there. They are either vendors I have used or additional FB pages associated with the SRR. A few of the teams are there. If others have FB pages I am not aware of them.

I do not use Twitter but if you search for #srrbot you can see what was tweeted by others.

The SRR is one of many NASA Centennial Challenges. Challenges of this type have a long history in aerospace. Lindbergh's crossing of the Atlantic is probably the one most well known. He won $33,000 for meeting the challenge.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute hosted the challenge. They were very good hosts providing 3 meals each day so the teams could work continuously. That also provided an opportunity to talk with some of the other teams. At all the other times the teams were heads-down working on their robots.

Friday local school kids visited, saw NASA exhibits, the teams demonstrating robots, and were generally exposed to technology. A group of high visibility social media users also toured the robot pits to talk with the teams and see the robots.

On Saturday, NASA and WPI hosted Touch Tomorrow to showcase NASA and robotics. All the teams demonstrated their robots at times throughout the day. The crowds, and especially the kids, liked seeing the robots perform.

All through the week NASA360 was there talking with us and taking pictures and videos. They were a great bunch of guys to have poking their lenses at us. There are some terrific photos and videos. To cap it off, NASA360 won an emmy for their TV show about last year's SRR: Robots, Rocks and Rovers. In May they won a Telly award for the same episode.

Here are some links to photos and videos:
https://pictures.lytro.com/NASAHQPHOTO/pictures/658265
NASA photos from all days.

(Tom had way too much fun putting shots of the Mystics in trouble in these.)
NASA360 Rover Madness
NASA360 Kicking 'Bot

Video from Mystic Two - taken from the camera on the rover.
Photos of the other teams.
Photos of us and the Mystics (pending getting them organized.)

DARPA LAGR Project

Today I was looking through some robotics papers applicable to Sample Return that I previously found on the web. One mentioned they were using a DARPA LAGR robot so I looked to see what it was. I found that Carnegie Mellon was involved in producing the standardized robots. The idea was to provide these robots to different researchers, have them develop navigation software, and have them compete on real-word runs to see what went better. The robots only had vision, GPS, and bumper sensors. The outcome of this project seems very applicable to the SRR competition.

One of the researchers at NYU has a long list of papers on navigation.

Sample Return Robot Challenge

The focus of the blog is changing. I mentioned that I rotate through projects. It is time to focus more on robotics, specifically the NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge.

In June 2012 NASA ran a Centennial Challenge competition at Worcster Polytechnic Institute. This concept for the competition was a robot on the Moon or Mars retrieving samples. Its tasks were:

• Obtain a pre-cached sample
• Search for other interesting samples
• Return all samples to a landing platform

I considered entering but abandoned the effort for personal and technical reasons. I am going to use the competition guidelines in the development of a robot. I believe the challenge will be repeated and am working now to overcome the technical issues. I will be sharing the effort on my web site. I am starting with a high-level analysis and dropping down to more details as that proceeds.

On this blog I will keep some notes on what has been updated on the project and provide some running commentary on the effort.