ROBOWII

Description

Wii Remote controller

Aim of this project is to develop games where people interact with autonomous robots by using the WII Remote, the main controller of the Nintendo WII console.

Since Wii Remote (shortly: Wiimote) has onboard a 3-axis accelerometer, and infrared camera, a speaker, 4 leds, a vibration system and many buttons, it could be used as a human-computer interface in many robotic applications.

Antonio Bianchi and Ben Chen developed a game system (Robowii) where the human player has to try to point a led target on the robot with the infrared camera of the WIIMote, while the robot tries to get a target position and at the same time to avoid to be caught.

The first robot

They have used a robot originally used in Robocup, with a two-wheels differential kinematics. RoboWII has been developed in Linux, using C++. The communication between computer and WIIMote is done using the library Wiiuse. Moreover, some packages developed at Politecnico di Milano within the MRT project (Modular Robotic Toolkit) have been used:

• DCDT, for message exchange among the components of RoboWII
• Mr. Brian, to program fuzzy logic behaviors

The localization software was originally developed within the LURCH project, and is able to localize the robot w.r.t. a set of printed markers placed on the ceiling over the playground This software uses the ArtToolkitPlus libraries.

Available Doumentation

Tesina completa di Bianchi e Chen: Media:Tesina_robowii.pdf

Codice completo:

Media: robowii_v1.1.tgz

Media: robowii_v1.2.tgz

nuova versione:

• compatibile con Ubuntu 8.10
• contiene istruzioni dettagliate per l'installazione in Ubuntu 8.10

Guide to MRT software

Some documentation about game design If anybody find anything else and find it interesting, please send it to Andrea Bonarini. At the moment, file uploading on this site is not allowed for security reasons.

People

Antonio Bianchi

Ben Chen

Antonio Micali

Andrea Pontecorvo

Advisor: Andrea Bonarini

Material

Nella scatola del progetto si trova:

• 1 Nintendo Wiimote
• angolari di metallo, velcro e cartone (per il montaggio della sensor bar e della telecamera)
• il materiale usato precedentemente per il progetto Polyphemus (telecamera mobile, cavi vari, ...)

Sul robot è presente:

• 1 telecamera Firewire
• 1 cavo firewire (3 mt.)
• 1 Airboard

Nuovo utente sul Mac Mini (user: robowii, password: robowii)

File:Meccano-spyke-medium.jpg

Spyke, the current RoboWii base

Work done

• Project start: March 2008
• First prototype delivered (Thesis 1st level Bianchi&Chen - September 2008)
• New robot arrival (Spyke) (Antonio Micali - November 2008)
• New interface to control the new robot from a remote PC (Antonio Micali - December 2008)

Planning

• Installation sonar belt (Antonio Micali - January 2009)
• Estension of the existing game considering the sonar belt (Antonio Micali - February 2009)
• Designa and implementation new game with game design methodology (Andrea Pontecorvo - 2009)

Laboratory work and risk analysis

Laboratory work for this project is mainly performed at AIRLab/Lambrate. It includes some mechanical work and electrical and electronic activity. Potentially risky activities are the following:

• Use of mechanical tools. Standard safety measures described in Safety norms will be followed.
• Use of soldering iron. Standard safety measures described in Safety norms will be followed.
• Transportation of heavy loads (e.g. robots). Standard safety measures described in Safety norms will be followed.
• Robot testing. Standard safety measures described in Safety norms will be followed.