Embedded Motion Control 2014 Group 4
Members of group 4
| Khy, R.N. | Norent |
| Kiriouchine, V.I. | Seva |
| Kuijk, F.J.M. van | Fransis |
| Marx, S. | Sanne |
Media
Find videos of the Pico emc04 tests on our Youtube channel.
See here an animated GIF of simulated Pico, where he takes a corner and stops:
Animation
Planning
Week 1:
-Introduction Lecture
-Determine course goals
Week 2:
-Install Ubuntu, ROS, fix SVN etc.: get everything up and running
-Finish all tutorials: C++, ROS
-Think of first concepts to tackle the corridor problem
-Implement first concepts: wallfinder, angle/distance controller
Week 3:
-Improve angle/distance controller
-Try to implement holonomic concept
-Meet tutor to discuss problems and project progress
-Perform Pico Test
Week 4:
-[Sanne] Place current functions in seperate .cpp files to allow for parallel updating
-[Sanne]Change the sendVelocity function into a twoPointNavigator function which aims to place pico between two lazer scan ranges+angles given as function input.
-[Fransis]Create a corridorFinder function which identifies the two corners of all corridors large enough for pico to pass through. Discard distant corridors and output two lazer scan ranges+angles of the closest found corridor.
-[Seva]Create a function which decides what points are sent to the twoPointNavigator function based on how close pico is to the side corridor found by corridorFinder , allowing pico to seamlessly switch between navigating the straight corridor and turning into the side corridor.
-[Norent]Change the safety radius into a safety box around pico using the dimensions of pico, create an unStuck function which allows pico to safely move away from any obstacle breaching the safety box.
-Implement a finishedCorridor condition which can detect that pico has left the corridor exit and stops all movement.
-[Pico EMC04]Win the corridor competition.
Concepts
wallFinder
Pico should be able to recognize walls. This can be done by using the Laser Range Finder. The data received from the Laser Range Finder must be filtered to get useful data that can be used by our controller.
From this sensor we receive an array with distances, 270 degrees around Pico. This array is split in half to represent vision on the left and right side. In these two arrays we search for the smallest distance that is greater than 0.15 m (a part of the vision is blocked by Pico him/her/it-self). Finally the angle at wich these distances are with repsect to Pico are calculated. This function thus finds two distances and two corresponding angles.
Angle/Distance controller
When Pico navigates through the corridor the distances found by the wallFinder are controlled to be equal. Besides the distances, the angles at which these distances are detected should be controlled to be zero. When the closest distances left and right of pico are equal and the angles zero, Pico is oriented in the middle of the corridor oriented in the longitudinal direction, which is exactly what we want.
Holonomic movement
At the tutor meeting it became clear that Pico is equipped with omni-wheels which means holonomic movement is possible. Currently the Pico in the simulator has differential wheels. With omni-wheels the distance can be controlled independent of the angle.
Cornering
We should think of how Pico can recognize and take corners.
findExit
We should think of how Pico can recognize the exit of the corridor so that it stops moving.
safetyHitbox
TODO
hitbox dimenions (front x side): 2.0e-1 x 1.5e-1.
unstuckSafety
TODO
Implementation
Wallfinder
The wallfinder is called with every lazerscan callback and will return the nearest scanpoint on the left and the nearest scanpoint on the right of pico.
Corridorfinder
The corridorfinder is called with every lazerscan callback and will return the closest corner point of the nearest corridor and the furthest corner point of the closest corridor to pico.
The closest corner is found by looking at the scan data forward of the found wallpoints and determining whether the difference between two subsequent points is large enough. The furtherst corner of the corridor is found by looking forward again past the closest point. When a local minimum is found in the scan distance this is called the furthest corner of the corridor. If the difference between the closest and furthest corner is not large enough for pico to pass through, the corridor is considered a gap.
Masterplanner
The masterplanner determines where to navigate. If the closest corridor corner is very close to one of the points found by the wallfinder, the pico will take the corner using the turnAroundPoint function. If no side corridor is found or the corridor is not close enough, pico will drive forward.
If while taking the corner the closest point on the other side of pico is found at an angle much different from +-90 degrees, the masterplanner knows the pico is mid corner. As soon as the wallfinder again finds the points left and right of pico at the same angle the masterplanner will switch to driving forward.
twoPointNavigator
The twoPointNavigator function will send the velocitys to pico in order to keep pico moving forward between parallel walls. The distance of closest points left and right of pico is controlled to be equal by controlling the linear.y speed. The angle of pico in relation to the walls is controlled by sending an angular.z speed such that the closest point left and right are at and equal angle from the centre of pico.
turnAroundPoint
The turnAroundPoint function will send the velocitys to pico in order to keep pico moving forward while keeping a constant distance to one of the wallfinder points, maintaining this point at a +/- 90 degree angle w.r.t. pico depending on what side the side corridor is.
stopFinal
The stopFinal function is called at each lazercallback to see if the pico has exited the maze using two checks. The first check checks whether all lazer range points are larger than a certain distance. This is the minimum distance pico needs to travel in order for it to consider itself outside of the maze. The second check splits up the lazer scan into 10 sectors, calculating the average distance for each sector. The average distance of each sector has to be greater than a certain (larger than the for the first used check) value. This ensures that the pico will stop close to the maze exit when the majority of the surroundings are very far away.
geometryIdentifier
The geometryIdentifier identifies whether pico is close to any corridors, intersections or junctions, it replaces the corridorFinder for the final test.
The steps taken by the geometryIdentifier are given in pseudo code as:
if (found corridor on the left)
- then
- if (found corridor on the right)
- then
- if (left and right corridor are at equal distance to pico
- then
- if (furthest points of both corridors are wide enough to be a corridor)
- then -> Pico has found an intersection
- else -> Pico has found a three way left right junction
- else -> Pico has found two seperate corridors
- else
- if (furthest corridor point is much closer than point in front of pico)
- then -> Pico has has found a three way left forward junction
- else -> Pico has found a corridor to the left
else
- if (found corridor on the right)
- then
- if (furthest corridor point is much closer than point in front of pico)
- then -> Pico has found a three way right forward junction
- else -> Pico has found a corridor to the right
- else -> Pico is in a corridor with no side corridors
Arrow recognition
The output of the arrow recognition is as given in table below.
| message | output |
|---|---|
| nothing | 0 |
| left | 1 |
| right | 2 |
First the RGB image is transformed to HSV and afterwards red-filtered to a binary image. Note the following:
Three tools available for image recognition:
Corner detection does not seem to be useful in its current form (as given in the slides), an improved version of corner detection might solve this problem. Also the parameters for corner detection might not be tuned well enough.
Log
Week 2:
Monday 28-04-2014: Group meeting SEL/SOL
Present: Sanne, Seva, Norent, Fransis
- Installed all software on laptops
- Got the svn up and running
- Started with tutorials and discussed problems
Wednesday 30-04-2014: Meeting SEL/SOL
Present: Sanne, Fransis
- Finished tutorials
Friday 02-05-2014: Meeting OGO 2
Present: Sanne, Seva, Norent, Fransis
- Created concepts: wallFinder, angle/distance controller, exitFinder, Cornering
- Implemented the following concepts: wallFinder, angle/distance controller:
- Pico now can detect walls and navigate through the corridor, not controlled optimal yet
Week 3:
Wednesday 07-05-2014: Group meeting OGO 18
Present: Sanne, Seva, Norent, Fransis
- Held first tutor meeting with Sjoerd
- Created holonomic concept
- Prepared for real world Pico test
Thursday 08-05-2014: First experiment with Pico
Present: Sanne, Seva, Norent, Fransis
- Preparation for the experiment by reviewing the tutorials and our work
- Tested code on Pico
- Saved logfiles
- Observed Pico's behaviour as expected:
- Safety precautions work
- Speed limits work
- Robust for gaps in wall
- Robust for small corridors (width: 8e-1 [m])
- Robust for non-straight corridors
- Unable to make the turn for the corridor contest
- Safety precautions work
- Measured Pico rectangular hitbox:
- front: 1.5e-1 [m]
- side: 2.0e-1 [m]
- Made videos of experiments (uploaded soon™)
- front: 1.5e-1 [m]
missing a part
Thursday 28-05-2014: Work session
Present: Sanne, Seva, Norent, Fransis
- Worked in seperate groups on decision making and arrow recognition
- Meeting with Sjoerd
Time Table
Overview of time spent per group member Lectures Group meetings Mastering ROS and C++ Preparing midterm assignment Preparing final assignment Wiki progress report Other activities Week_1_Norent 2 Week_1_Seva 2 6 Week_1_Fransis Week_1_Sanne 2 2 Week_1_Jorrit Week_2_Norent 2 6 Week_2_Seva 2 6 2 Week_2_Fransis 2 4 6 Week_2_Sanne 2 6 4 0.5 Week_2_Jorrit Week_3_Norent 1 3 3 1 Week_3_Seva 2 12 Week_3_Fransis 2 8 Week_3_Sanne 2 12 Week_3_Jorrit Week_4_Norent 13 2 Week_4_Seva 15 2 Week_4_Fransis 15 Week_4_Sanne 15 2 Week_4_Jorrit Week_5_Norent 8 Week_5_Seva Week_5_Fransis Week_5_Sanne Week_5_Jorrit Week_6_Norent Week_6_Seva Week_6_Fransis Week_6_Sanne Week_6_Jorrit Week_7_Norent Week_7_Seva Week_7_Fransis Week_7_Sanne Week_7_Jorrit Week_8_Norent Week_8_Seva Week_8_Fransis Week_8_Sanne Week_8_Jorrit Week_9_Norent Week_9_Seva Week_9_Fransis Week_9_Sanne Week_9_Jorrit Week_10_Norent Week_10_Seva Week_10_Fransis Week_10_Sanne Week_10_Jorrit