No prior knowledge of electronics is required, but precise work is mandatory. Basic C programming skills required (for the controller). If you want to get more into electronics: change the morphology and try to upgrade your robot with additional or more sophisticated sensors. Every group has to include some theoretical reflections on the practical work as well.

Goal of this seminar is that you get familiar with low level hardware and software as well as to get experience with "the real world" when working with motors and sensors on robots. Furthermore you can try to apply the design principles of the book on your robot.

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Regulations / Preconditions

Bachelor and Master students can register for this course as well as PPO01 students and external students (please note: This seminar has a different ID in the booking tool for Bachelor and Master students).

Recommended: Visited lecture "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence". If you have not visited this class, please read the book (How the Body...) before you start with the seminar.

Bachelor students

Precondition: passed assessment year, visited lecture "Introduction to AI", basic C programming skills

Master/PPO01/external students

Precondition: visited lecture "Introduction to AI", basic C programming skills

Due to the different requirements, groups cannot be mixed with Bachelor and Master students!

Active participation is required in at least 90% of all the seminar sessions.

Material

Book

How theBody Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence (Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard, MIT Press, 2006)

Robot kit

ASURO (developed at German Aerospace Centre)

One kit per group will be provided by the AILab, but you are of course free to buy additional ones on your own (at Educatec or Conrad)

The Asuro robot kits are sponsored by

Asuro books (optional):

There are two additional books available (German and English). These books provide the reader with greater insight and detail about ASURO than is available in the manual. Recommended for those who want to change/extend the robot.

Assignment

In this seminar, each group has to work on a project, give a presentation and write a paper about the project.

Project

The presentation has to include the idea of the project, goals, approach, theory (from the book), demonstration, conclusion.

The theoretical part is as important as the practical part!

Paper

Each group has to hand in a paper (8-10 pages) in English by 29.05.09, 24:00

Please note: 10 pages are the maximum number of pages, we stop reading at the end of page 10!

The paper has to include the idea of the project, goals, approach, development, theory (topics from the book applied to your project ), results, conclusion, outlook. Please avoid a design principles checklist!

Please include in your paper front page:

- Group number

- Project name

- Name of the group members

- Student numbers

The paper has to be written in a scientific way.

Example structure:

- Abstract

- Introduction

Goals

- Theory

Related work (find research projects (or commercial products), examples in nature that relate to your problem and discuss them)

Approach (your approach how to solve your problem (inspired by the design principles from the book)

- Development

Problems*

Implementation (How did you implement your approach. Does the implementation differ from the planned approach?)

Results

- Conclusion

- Outlook

- References

* Try to keep this section short -- don't write about "general difficulties" such as "it is difficult to solder it" or "programming is difficult", but write about the issues related to your specific task. In general, it's not so interesting to know what DIDN'T work, but it's interesting to know how you SOLVED the problems.

Please upload* a zip file (filename: groupX) containing:

- A pdf version of your paper
- A pdf version of your presentation slides
- A folder containing your Asuro source code
- A folder containing your Java or other source code (if applicable)
- Pictures, videos (if available)

*Login to your seminar wiki account to upload your project.

Schedule (tentative)

Active participation is required in at least 90% of all the seminar sessions.

Workshop

You can use the AILab teaching room (AND 2.34) as a workshop (solder stations and tools are available as well as Linux workstations) and as a room to work on your projects. Please send an email notification to Dorit when you want to use the room.

Electronic compoments

Additional electronic components can be bought for example in these shops:

Pusterla Elektronik Hohlstrasse 52, 8004 Zürich

Conrad Alte Dübendorferstrasse 17, 8305 Dietlikon

Distrelec (they ship very fast!)

Farnell

Seminar Wiki

In the seminar wiki you can find example projects of previous seminars as well as helpful articles and links. Furthermore a forum is provided where you can discuss problems.

Links

You can find much information about the Asuro robot in the internet. Some useful links:

Arexx Engineering (especially for software updates)
Asuro Wiki
RoboterNetz.de