Adaptive Robots

Lecturer: Henrik Hautop Lund

mailto:hhl@daimi.aau.dk.

students, groups, and calender

Mini-symposium on Robotics in Biology:

On Friday the 21st of November, there will be a mini-symposium on robotics in biology to be held at the Natural History Museum in Aarhus. The speakers are Barbara Webb from Univ. of Nottingham, Holk Cruse from Univ. of Bielefeld, Christian Freksa from Univ. of Hamburg, and Henrik Hautop Lund from CIT, Univ. of Aarhus. Have a look at the schedule for mini-symposium.

As an interesting supplement to our discussion about embodied intelligence during the last two lectures, you may notice that there is a symposium on Embodied Cognition and AI at 14th European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research, April 14-17, 1998. In the call for contributions, the chairs, Maja Mataric and Erich Prem, state that "Embodied artificial intelligence (EAI) has recently received enormous interest both from scientists and the broad public. Embodied artificial intelligence proposes a new approach to the study of human intelligence and the construction of intelligent artefacts. Its central belief is that the body is the logical and physical source of intelligence and that in order to understand intelligent behavior, dynamic bodily interaction must be understood first."
Further, there has been a very recentspecial issue of Cybernetics and Systems on Embodied AI. So, while most of our literature in the course on this issue dates back to mid/late eighties, there is still a lively discussion going on about the role of Embodied AI.

Multimedie Event:

We will present some of our robots at the Multimedie Event '97, which is held in Aarhus Raadhus, 19-20 September 1997. Our show will feature a team of garbage collecting miniature robots.

Papers to read

1. What are Adaptive Robots? 2. Behavior-Based Systems 3. Control Theory 4. Evolutionary Robotics 5. Simulation or Real Robots? 6. Co-evolution of Robots 7. Towards Complex Behaviours (Evolvable Behavior-Based Systems) 8. Learning and Evolution 9. Evolvable Hardware in Robotics 10. Evolving the Robot's Physical Structure 11. Robots as Biological Models 12. Learning 13. Reinforcement Learning 14. Multi-Robots 15. Vision

Book:

Supplementary reading:

Authors:

(some)

Groups:

Khepera robot: the meaning.

You keep wondering what the meaning of the word Khepera is. Well, here is an explanation.

Khepera robot communication:

From kermit, when the robot is in mode 3, you should set the communication as follows:

set line /dev/ttya
set speed 38400
set terminal bytesize 8
set duplex half
con

You can then type in commands from the protocol such as D,2,2

Later, after having made tests with the Khepera robot via kermit, you would probably like to make complete control programs. In the C programming language, you can use the communication procedures in serial.tar.gz. In this tar file, you'll also find Rene's example program that allows the Khepera robot to turn around in steps of 90 degrees and move backward in steps of 1.0cm.

Khepera Braitenberg program:

Jørgen, Jesper and Henrik have made a nice obstacle avoidance behaviour for the Khepera robot based on Braitenberg's principles. The program is also a nice example of how to make the serial communication with the Khepera robot and how to write the control program in C. You can download braitenberg.tar.gz.

Khepera Evolutionary Robotics simulator:

This simulator allows you to evolve neural network control systems for the Khepera robot in simulation and then run them to the real robot. The simulator also allows evolution directly (and eventually entirely) on the physical robot. It was made by S. Nolfi, O. Miglino and H. H. Lund. You can download evolrob.tar.gz .

You can get more info about the evolutionary robotics simulator in the guide

The compilation has been tested on SUN and SGI (new updated makefile 6/10/97 !)
Remember to use something like nice or hugin when you run the simulator on other people's machines.

You can untar the files using gunzip and then tar xvf evolrob.tar (or eventually tar zxvf evolrob.tar.gz).

Run autunomously without cable connection:

After having made a lot of experiments with the robot with cable connection (in order to get knowledge about the sensor and motor responses) it is time to look at how to download program to the robot and have it to run autonomously without cable connection. This demands cross-compilation of your programs, so that they can run on Khepera's Motorola 68331. You can still write the programs in C, but the protocol for communication with the Khepera motors, sensors, timer, etc. is different. You can download download.tar.gz that includes sample programs and a makefile that allows you to cross-compile the programs for the Khepera. You might have to change paths in the Makefile to suit your local settings (where you have placed the GNU C cross-compiler).

You can also download wall.tar.gz which is a small example program that allows the robot to move forward until it meets a wall and then adjust itself to stand straight in front of the wall. You can use this as a basis for developing more complex behaviours. The robot with this small control program will also follow a moving object, as long as the object is in the vicinity of the robot.

Communication to additional Khepera modules:

In programs downloaded to the Khepera robot, there is a way to use the same commands as in the protocol used with serial communication. You can download camera.tar.gz that gives you an example of how to do this, in this case with the K213 vision module.

Khepera Potato Holiday Contest:

On Thursday 16/10/97, we will have the Potato Holiday Contest in evolving neural network controllers for the Khepera robot. The grand prizes are three 1/2 boxes of Carlsberg, Tuborg or Ceres beers !!!

Children playing with Khepera and LEGO robots:

Here are photos of children playing with our Khepera robot and LEGO robot demonstrations that we have shown during different multimedia events and exhibitions.

Robot Football Competition:

The final project in the course is the development of a robot footballer, and the participation in the Danish Championship in Robot Football. There is a lot of informations about the Danish Championship in Robot Football at the web site: You can also look at the English version We will follow the rules of the Second Autonomous Robot Football Tournament. You might find it useful to read also about the First Autonomous Robot Football Tournament that was held in Brighton in July 1997 during the European Conference on Artificial Life. First Autonomous Robot Football Tournament, and Second Autonomous Robot Football Tournament.

Here are photos of a Khepera robot footballer.

IR, Ambient Light, and K213 Camera Sensors:

Thomas has written a small program that allows you to continuously monitor the different sensor inputs (including input from the K213 vision module) and steer the robot around. It also includes some simple behaviours that you might allow the robot to use. You can download khep_sensors.tar.gz. It runs in serial communication 38400 baud mode (mode 3).

Khepera K213 Vision Module:

It is a bit tricky to figure out the actual functionality of the light intensity sensor and the 64*1 linear array sensor of the K213 vision module, so here is an explanation of K213 vision module.

Journals:

Conferences:

go back to Henrik Hautop Lund's Homepage.