Case Western Reserve University Lego Robotics Kickoff Meeting

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Case Western Reserve University Lego Robotics
Kickoff Meeting
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Whats up with his foot?

• I had surgery to have some bone spurs removed.
• It happened last Friday.
• Its no big deal Ill be wearing shoes again by
  the end of the month.

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Who am I?

• Now that thats out of the way
• Amaury Rolin
• Undergrad In Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie
  Mellon University, Pittsburgh
• Worked for 4 years at National Instruments in
  Austin, TX
• Came to Case in 2005 to get my masters in EECS
• Lead the software effort on Cases Urban
  Challenge entry in 2007

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Dr. Wyatt S. Newman

• My advisor
• Also Mech E turned Electrical Engineer
• Managed Cases Urban Challenge team

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Agenda

• Intro To Case Western Reserve University and
  Urban Challenge. (20 min)
• LabVIEW distribution
• Intro to our competition and the rules. (20 min)
• Intro to LabVIEW workshop Pt I (40 min)
• Field trip to other robots Kit Distribution (20
  min)
• Intro to LabVIEW workshop Pt II ()

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Urban whowhat?

• Urban Challenge
• Congress wants 1/3 of military vehicles to be
  unmanned by 2015
• Weve got a long way to go
• DARPA gets research for cheap by convincing
  people to compete to build self driving cars.

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Who competes?

• Mostly universities that have been researching
  how to build robots for a long time.
• Some companies that want to show that they know
  the robot game so when the time comes when the
  army is looking for someone that can build their
  robots.
• Car companies that want to add all sorts of
  safety features to their cars. (mostly partnered
  with universities)
• Anyone who can and wants to play with really
  expensive toys (3M-300K).

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And youre telling me this why?

• Since its such an important event in robotics
  and represents the bleeding edge of mobile
  robotics we decided to model this years Lego
  competition after it.
• So stay tuned!

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What do you get?

• 1st Place 2M a giant eagle shaped trophy
• 2nd Place 1M a big eagle shaped trophy
• 3rd Place 500K an eagle shaped trophy
• After thata warm satisfied feeling that you are
  not working on that robot any more!

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History of the Urban Challenge

• Used to be the Grand Challenge
• Started in 2004 as a 300mi robot race through the
  desert.
• Winner Carnegie Mellon University
• Distance Traveled 7mi
• Conclusion What a shambles! We better try that
  again.

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Next Round 2005

• A little easier 180mi race
• 5 Teams finish.
• Stanford gets 1st place
• One robot starts out with a tremendous lead and
  80min into the race seems like the clear
  winneruntil disaster strikes its name DEXTER

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Who is DEXTER and why do we care?

• DEXTER was built by the ENSCO corporation to
  compete in the 2005 Grand Challenge.
• DEXTER is a robot built on a dune buggy chassis.
• DEXTER is a desert eating machine.
• DEXTER was Cases adoptee for running in the 2007
  Urban Challenge
• DEXTER movie

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Grand/Urban Challenge

• Urban Challenge is a Grand challenge
• Desert Challenge
• When a robot caught up to an other robot the lead
  robot would be paused and the other robot could
  pass.
• Only one path and the goal was to get to the end.
• Challenge was mostly terrain. Where to go was
  marked with waypoints every 100ft in an RDDF
  file.
• First robot to cross the finish line wins.
• Urban Challenge
• Robots have to interact with other robots and
  live traffic.
• A network of roads is defined. Robots must be
  able to plan their way through the network to
  complete a mission.
• Robots must obey the rules of the road. Stop at
  intersections and yield to traffic.
• Robots are scored based on checkpoints and how
  safe they appear.

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So the robot has to be able to see stop signs and
lights?

• No.
• There are not stop lights in Urban Challenge
  World.
• Whether to stop at an intersection depends on how
  it is defined in the RNDF (Ill get to that in a
  bit)
• Where to stop was defined by the coordinates in
  the RNDF.

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So you drove this robot on real roads?

• Sort of
• We practiced on closed roads or on the campus
  quad. DEXTER is definitely not street legal.
• The actual competition was on George Air Force
  Base in Victorville, California

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Basic Navigation

• Vehicle is in autonomous mode and ready to begin
  run less than 5 minutes after receipt of the MDF
  from DARPA.
• Vehicle front bumper passes over each checkpoint
  in DARPA MDF in the correct lane and the correct
  sequence.
• Vehicle stays in travel lanes at all times unless
  exiting lane to avoid obstacle.
• Vehicle always stops so front bumper is within 1
  meter of stop line at intersection.
• Vehicle always exhibits less than 10-second delay
  before proceeding at clear intersection.
• Vehicle exhibits safe behavior at all times to
  avoid collisions and near-collisions as judged by
  DARPA.
• Vehicle demonstrates ability to leave lane, pass
  a stopped car or obstacle, and return directly to
  travel lane. Complete maneuver takes place within
  40 meters.
• Vehicle maintains a minimum safety separation of
  8 meters fore and aft when executing a passing
  maneuver.
• Vehicle speed conforms to limits set in DARPA
  MDF.

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Basic Traffic

• Vehicle meets all criteria for navigation test.
• Vehicle exhibits proper precedence order at every
  intersection and does not proceed out of turn.
• Vehicle never comes closer than 15 meters when
  following a moving lead vehicle traveling at
  15 mph on an urban course with 20 mph speed
  limit.
• Vehicle stays within 40 meters when following a
  moving lead vehicle traveling at 15 mph on an
  urban course with 20 mph speed limit.
• Vehicle stops between 5 and 10 meters behind a
  stopped lead vehicle.

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Advanced Navigation

• Vehicle exhibits correct parking lot behavior,
  including ability to pull forward into and
  reverse out of specified parking spot without
  collision and with less than 10 seconds of excess
  delay.
• Vehicle demonstrates ability to negotiate
  obstacle field safely and effectively, with no
  collisions and with less than 10 seconds of
  excess delay.
• Vehicle conducts maneuvers necessary to achieve
  objective checkpoints, including U-turns and
  route re-planning when roads are blocked. A
  U-turn may be effected through one or more
  three-point turns.
• Vehicle navigates roads with sparse or
  low-accuracy waypoints, including ability to stay
  in travel lane through road-following by sensing
  berms or road edges, or by any other sensor-based
  technique.

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What did we get from DARPA?

• Route Network Definition File (RNDF)
• Defines where the roads start and stop
• Defines which road connects to which road
• Declares the road width, number of lanes,
  directionality.
• Provides sparse waypoints along the road.
• Defines some waypoints as checkpoints
• Mission Definition File (MDF)
• Declared the speed limits of the roads
• Defined the order in which checkpoints are to be
  visited

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• RNDF_name Team_Case_Site_Visit_RNDF
• num_segments 3
• num_zones 0
• format_version 1.0
• creation_date 3/15/2007
• segment 1
• num_lanes 2
• segment_name Loop_Rd
• lane 1.1
• num_waypoints 20
• lane_width 15
• left_boundary double_yellow
• checkpoint 1.1.3 8
• checkpoint 1.1.8 9
• checkpoint 1.1.13 10
• checkpoint 1.1.18 11
• stop 1.1.20
• exit 1.1.20 1.1.1
• exit 1.1.20 2.2.1

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MDF_name NE_Stub_To_Outside_To_Inside RNDF Team_Ca
se_Site_Visit_RNDF format_version 1.0 creation_dat
e 09/12/2007 checkpoints num_checkpoints 3 1 2 9
end_checkpoints speed_limits num_speed_limit
s 3 1 0 9 2 0 9 3 0 9 end_speed_limits end_file

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How Does DEXTER do his thing?

• Biologically inspired
• Sensory fusion
• Behaviors and Moods
• Physical State estimation
• LIDAR, GPS, IMU, Cameras, Wheel Encoders, RADAR
• Everything programmed in LabVIEW
• Easy to learn
• Easy to write multithreaded applications
• Easy to communicate between parts of architecture

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How Did DEXTER do?

• We had a couple of bugs that we quickly fixed
  when we found them.
• We ran into a wall twice.
• At one point a sensor got aimed wrong and we
  thought the road was an obstacle.
• We made it to the last 19 teams.
• Only 11 teams qualified
• We held our own with the big fish and had a good
  time.
• videos