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The aim of the project is first to improve the current design of the PIC-based board, and realize a new working prototype, and then to implement and evaluate different algorithms able to estimate more precisely the x,y and theta odometric data from the mice readings. Experience with PIC-based systems and some experience with electronics circuits is a plus. Students are supposed to redesign the electronic board, improve the firmware of the PIC, and work on the algorithm that estimates the robot position on the PC. It would be also interesting to evaluate the possibility to embed the optimization and estimation algorithms in the firmware of the PIC in order to produce a stand-alone device.

Ask the tutors of the project for extra material, such as data-sheets and other documentation.

Material:

• Kinect sensor and libraries
• A framework for multisensor SLAM
• PCL2.0 library for dealing with point clouds

Expected outcome:

• Algorithm able to build 3D point cloud representation of the observed scene
• Point clouds processing could be used to improve the accuracy of the filter as well

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• Basic background in computer vision
• Basic background in Kalman filtering
• C++ programming under Linux

• implementing embedded algorithms for the estimation of the IMU attitude to be compared with the actual one (e.g., Kalman filter, DCM, Madgwick, etc.)
• developing a, easy to use, procedure for the calibration of IMU parameters
• making a comparison with commercial units using a robot arm as testbed
• validate the accuracy of the IMU on a flying platform
• integrate the measurements from a GPS to reduce drift and provide accurate positiong (this will make it definitely a MS thesis)

Material

• electronic board and eclipse based C development toolkit for ARM processors
• papers describing the algorithms we are interested in implementing

Expected outcome:

• few different AHRS algorithms with comparative results
• user-friendly procedure to calibrate the IMU
• a sistem which integrated IMU and GPS to provide accurate positioning

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• C programming on ARM microcontroller
• background on kalman filtering and attitude estimation

• J.R. Wolpaw et al. Brain-computer interfaces for communication and control (http://tinyurl.com/yhq27pq)
• R.J. Croff, R.J. Barry. Removal of ocular artifact from the EEG: a review (http://tinyurl.com/ykk6ks9)

Material

• A framework for multisensor SLAM using the world centric approach
• Papers and report about robocentric slam

Expected outcome:

• a fully functional robocentric version of the MoonSLAM framework

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• Basic background in computer vision
• Background in Kalman filtering
• C++ programming under Linux

Material:

• a MS thesis which describes the scan matching algorithms
• a BS thesis which implements a prototype of the system

Expected outcome:

• a complete system that build maps integrating laser scan and visual informtion

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• Background on Kalman filtering
• C++ programming under Linux

When developing embedded applications it is common the need to test some algorithm in some fast way, without to re-program the whole firmware every time. PAWN (http://www.compuphase.com/pawn/) is a *simple and lightweight scripting language with a C-like syntax*. Execution speed, stability, simplicity and a small footprint were essential design criteria for both the language and the abstract machine, making PAWN suitable for embedded applications.

This project aims to port the abstract machine to ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers, add a set of functions to interface with the underlying hardware peripherals and then to embed it as ChibiOS/RT (http://www.chibios.org) thread.

Material:

• datasets with real data
• a few odometric system implementations
• C++ libraries for non linear optimization

Expected outcome:

• software for the self calibration of a set of odometry systems mounted on the same robot

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• C++ programming under Linux

The proposed project is aimed at extending USARSim along two directions:

• Development of a tool for automatically generating realistic 3D worlds for robot testing. This task involves work on 3D game modelling and development using the UDK engine.
• Create test arenas and perform experiment in USARSim. Simulation tools as USARSim are powerful tools for robotics, but in order to consider the results obtained in a virtual environment also valid in the real case, simulated environments must be validated through experiments performed both in virtually and with real robots.

Results will be included in the USARSim project and used by the RoboCup community.

• Implementation of mechanical and electronical parts of the robots for the management of the ball and kicking
• Design of robot behaviors (fuzzy systems)
• Coordination of robots
• New sensors

These projects allow to experiment with real mobile robots. Participation to the championships is a unique experience (2000 people, with 800 robots playing all sort of games...)

The project can be turned into a thesis by facing different problems in depth.

Aim of this project is to design and develop a software tool to extract this kind of information from a single social network platform (decided by the student). It may be required also some kind of analysis or visual representation of the collected data.

TiltOne is a robot with only two wheels that can stand in vertical position following an unstable equilibrium point. The control is applied by commanding an amount of torque to the wheels, allowing the robot to mantain it's gravity center vertical aligned to the wheel axis.

The aim of the project proposal is to implement and compare different control solutions, based on classical approach (as PID and LQR control) and Machine Learning approach (as Reinforcement Learning control policies), that allow the robot to move following a given trajectory at a given speed.

variables associated to both internal nodes and leaves of the tree.

The project will focus on the understanding of the problem and on the implementation of different algorithms, so (C/C++ or Matlab or R) coding will be required. Since the approach will be based on statistical models, the student is supposed to be comfortable with notions that come from probability and statistics courses.

The project is thought to be extended to master thesis, according to interesting and novel directions of research that will emerge in the first part of the work. Possible ideas may concern the proposal and implementation of new algorithms, based on recent approaches to phylogenetic inference available in the literature, as in (3) and (4). In this case the thesis requires some extra effort in order to build and consolidate some background in math in oder to understand some recent literature, especially in (mathematical) statistics and, for example, in the emerging field of algebraic statistics (5).

Other possible novel applications of phylogenetic trees have been proposed in contexts different from biology, as in (6). Malware (malicious software) is software designed to infiltrate a computer without the owner's informed consent. Often malwares are related to previous programs thought evolutionary relationships, i.e., new malwares appear as small mutations of previous softwares. We are interested in the use of techniques from phylogenetic trees to create a taxonomy of real world malwares.

Picture taken from http://www.tolweb.org/tree/ and http://www.blogscienze.com

Bibliography

1. Felsenstein 2003: Inferring Phylogenies
2. Semple and Steel 2003: Phylogenetics: The mathematics of phylogenetics
3. Louis J. Billera, Susan P. Holmes and and Karen Vogtmann Geometry of the space of phylogenetic trees. Advances in Applied Math 27, 733-767 (2001)
4. Evans, S.N. and Speed, T.P. (1993). Invariants of some probability models used in phylogenetic inference. Annals of Statistics 21, 355-377.
5. Lior Pachter, Bernd Sturmfels 2005, Algebraic Statistics for Computational Biology.
6. A. Walenstein, E-Md. Karim, A. Lakhotia, and L. Parida. Malware Phylogeny Generation Using Permutations of Code, Journal in Computer Virology, v1.1, 2005.

Per maggiori informazioni, inviare una mail a lanzi@elet.polimi.it

Comportamenti di Gruppo in Videogiochi di Corse Automobilistiche

Questa tesi prevede lo studio delle dinamiche dei comportamenti dei piloti in competizioni automobilistiche su circuito e lo sviluppo di una intelligenza artificiale in grado di imitare i comportamenti di un vero mevero pilota. In particolare, il lavoro di tesi si concentrerà su comportamenti di gruppo come i sorpassi, le manovre per evitare collisioni con altri veicoli, il recupero da situazioni di emergenza, ecc. Terminatala fase di analisi e l’implementazione di un prototipo, verrà valutata la possibilità di inserire tale implementazione all’interno di un videogioco di ultima generazione.

Comportamenti di Gruppo in Videogiochi di Corse Motociclistiche

Questa tesi prevede lo studio delle dinamiche dei comportamenti dei piloti in competizioni motociclistiche su circuito e lo sviluppo di una intelligenza artificiale in grado di imitare i comportamenti di un vero vero pilota. In particolare, il lavoro di tesi si concentrerà su comportamenti di gruppo come i sorpassi, le manovre per evitare collisioni con altre moto, il recupero da situazioni di emergenza, ecc. Terminata la fase di analisi e l’implementazione di un prototipo, verrà valutata la possibilità di inserire tale implementazione all’interno di un videogioco di ultima generazione.

Intelligenza Artificiale in Videogiochi di Corse Motociclistiche

La tesi prevede l’analisi e l’implementazione dell’intelligenza artificiale per un videogioco di corse motociclistiche. Il sistema dovrà essere in grado di eseguire in modo corretto ed efficace un insieme di manovre complesse quali: l’accelerazione da fermo, la frenata in situazioni limite, l’approccio ad una curva che preveda la fase di stacco, di impostazione, di percorrenza e di uscita, l’approccio a serie di curve, ecc. Si valuterà la possibilità di inserire tale implementazione all’interno di un videogioco di ultima generazione.

Material:

• papers from major journals and conferences
• reports from research projects

Expected outcome:

• a report with a detailed review of the state of the art organized according to the main relevant aspects (to be identified during the work)
• an implementation of some state of the art algorithms for tracking or navigation

Required skills or skills to be acquired:

• proficiency in english
• basic understanding of computer vision
• basic understanding of filtering techniques

One possible example is the annotation of mp3 files available on the Web. They can be classified in genres or associated to datatype properties, such as rating, title, length and release date... also exploiting data already available in http://musicbrainz.org/