A Blender 3D Survival Guide - A Beginners Haven

Blender, an open source 3D Graphics and Animation software is an excellent resource. But, a beginner soon gets into a web while learning the essentials. Paolo Ciccone provides a series of tutorials, which he calls a survival guide. True, it would surely help a beginner to survive the initial onslaught of learning the new software called Blender.

You'll find them at "The Blender 3D Survival Guide"

Are you a beginner? Blender tutorial for Robotics

Blender is a very comprehensive tool which is easy and fast for modeling. You can now use blender for robotic simulations. Are you new to blender or robotic simulations? There is a five part tutorial, which helps you to begin your journey in robotic simulations using Blender.

Part 1 - Introduction and Modelling

Part 2 - Parenting and Rigging

Part 3 - Interfacing with the Game Engine

Part 4 - Programming in the Game Engine

Part 5 - Game Engine and The Kinect

Looking for Robot Simulation Software?

      Open source - a nice word to hear, for the less privileged (may be that's about a few years back). LAAS/CNRS which has been working with Autonomous Systems have put together a group of open source software for simulation of perception, action and reasoning capabilities.

      It includes Applications for Architecture, Symbolic models and 3D path planning, Simulation and visualization and Interaction and social skills.

     It also includes Tools and Libraries for Trajectory Generation, Communication, Helpers along with an 'Abstract Interface'.

    You can find them at openrobots.org

Autonomous Flight of simulated quadrotor using ROS MoveIt

Alessio Tonioni presents his thesis work on autonomous flight using ROS MoveIt. You can also find links to his thesis and the code. You'll find necessary information to simulate and try it on your own.Check it out. Be sure to like his video.

Plugin to IEEE Robot Motion Planning and Control Resources

www.robotmotion.org, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Technical Committee's site is a destination for Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion.

You will come across Open source softwares for motion planning, Data sets, Videos, Educational Resources of Books and Courses. You will also find information on the upcoming events and important News articles related to motion planning.

Robot Motion and Path Planning Research Resources from GAMMA

GAMMA (Geometric Algorithms for Modeling, Motion and Animation) research group are making a significant and ever increasing contribution in the field of research. Ongoing research works include Collision detection and proximity queries, Crowd and multi agent simulation, Interactive ray tracing, Motion and path planning, Physically based modelling, simulation and animation, Sound synthesis and propagation, Traffic simulation, reconstruction and route planning.

The Motion and path planning related resources can be found here.

Courses on Robot Motion Planning

I found some old courses on Motion Planning, which would be pretty useful to all those people who are just planting their feet into motion planning. You'll get an outline picture of motion planning and also find some useful Lectures, Homework, links to books and software. Explore the place and help yourself.

Motion Planning in Real and Virtual Worlds

Robotic Motion Planning

Motion Planning Algorithm and Application Resources

A treasure,  of 2 D benchmarks, Robotics conferences and very useful Links for Robotics tools and popular researchers in the field is provided by Parasol.
Check out!!!

Math Learning through Robotics

Is your in school showing up signs of interest in Robotics? Introduce him the world of Robotics in a way he best likes. Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy have come up with a game which would teach the math behind robot movement. When the child gets involved in a science fiction type of gaming, he will learn the basic mathematical framework behind robot motion.

Visit the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy's Expedition Atlantis Game Site

Robotics Courses from Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy

New to the world of robotics? Looking for some training in some of the most commonly used platforms in Robotics? Here's is a chance offered to you.

Have a heard start into the world of robotics programming and simulation. CS2N offers a number of courses ranging from building Robot's Virtual World, Modelling to programming the robot.
Sign Up for a Robotics Course

How to Download Matlab Webinar?

   This seems to be an odd post here. But, I thought it would be helpful to all those Matlab users out there.

   There are many reasons for the need to download a matlab webinar. Important reason is that, the video stops playing abruptly due to some reasons. So, here is the way to download a Matlab video. The video is a flash stream and so there is no way of downloading this under normal condition. I have used Chrome to demonstrate the method. Follow the series of steps.

1. Disable Flash Player Plugin in Google Chrome
    > Here's the link to Plugin, chrome://plugins/

2. Open the Matlab Webinar you want to download or refresh the web page, if you have already opened it.
    > The web page will show a message from 'Adobe Flash Player' like, "WE'RE SORRY! you need to update your Flash Player"

3. Open Developer Tools ( Ctrl + Shift + I ) and click 'Show drawer' icon (the first icon at the top right corner)

A drawer window opens at the bottom of the page with console, search, emulation and rendering options.

4. Select 'Emulation' tab. Check 'Spoof user agent' option found in the emulation tab. Select 'iPhone - iOS 7' option from the drop down list below 'Spoof user agent' option'. (You can select any of the iPad or iPhone options)

5. Reload the Matlab Webinar webpage. Play the video.

6. Open Developer Tools ( Ctrl + Shift + I ) and select the 'Network' tab

7. Copy link address (under the column, Name - Path) of the file, whose 'type' is 'video/mp4'.

8. Paste the link in a new tab and load it.

9. Right Click the Video and save it.


Post your comments or queries.

Simulation of Collision Avoidance

   Collision Avoidance plays a central role in the quest for an increasing amount of Autonomy in robots. With simulation being the smart step before placing the robots to the fate of trial runs, greater interest has been shown in creating better simulation environment.

   For a beginner who is yet to picture, what goes into the simulation of a mobile robot for Collision Avoidance, there is a recorded webinar in Matlab-Simulink. The webinar is divided into two parts,

1. Converting a CAD model to a Simulink SimMechanics model.
2. Design and Implementation of a Collision Avoidance algorithm.

Here is the MATLAB Webinar - Mobile Robot Simulation for Collision Avoidance with Simulink

You need to have or create a MathWorks Account to view the Webinar.

Robot Planning and Control Resources

   Resource - a repository of,

• Books
• Theses
• Newsletters 
• Softwares
• Research Papers

related to Algorithms for Planning and Control of Robot Motion can be found here.

Motion Planning and Google Sketchup

Google Sketchup is becoming increasingly useful to motion planners, for creating environments, robots and motion planning queries. Now, Google Sketchup comes with a plugin that allows you to run, OOPSMP from Sketchup. OOPSMP helps you to solve motion planning problems.

To know about OOPSMP, Go here

For those who are new to Sketchup, there are certain start-up tutorials

>>> Google Sketchup tutorial videos

There are three tutorials on using the OOPSMP plugin from Sketchup

> 1. Defining your motion planning problem

> 2. Solving your motion planning problem

> 3. Animating your solution

Pepper, the Emotional Robot

   I am a person, who is fascinated by the precious human behaviour, tendencies and nature. But, to see a world where virtual life reigns supreme and reality often takes the back seat, it grieves the heart to see a scared human nature develop out of it.

   Incessant stimulation of human emotions through movies, games and the exposure to media has left humans bankrupt of emotions. A void in the human capability to understand emotions is now being filled in by a robot called, Pepper. Pepper can be very affectionate and understands emotions.

  Pepper is a humanoid developed by Aldebaran for SoftBank. It can learn, improve its communication and it would not be weird in this world if humans start falling in love with it.

> In News: Meet Pepper : The first Robot with Emotions

Human like decision making Robots

 

 With the start of industrialization, began the period wherein the toughness, the brute force and power of a man were no more considered precious. Machinery took the place of a hard working man on a physical plane. It led to a generation, where the big burly muscles were worth only for a stage show and an unnecessary component in every day life.

   As we have moved from an age of physical slavery and oppression, we have moved into a more subtle age, where the air is filled with voices of  physical freedom. A deceptive voice with a more severe form of slavery as a goal, the mental oppression.

  Robots which were originally finding their role as a replacement of human's physical force are starting to find their place on mental and emotional levels. Various efforts to Reverse engineer the human brain has been carried out. Researcher Jeffrey Krichmer, a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of  California talks on reverse engineering the brain to program the robots to be more neurotic, thereby making human like decisions. In a time when humans have stopped behaving like humans, robot have come for a rescue to show forth what human behavior is.

> Soon Robots to Behave as Humans

> Jeffrey Krichmar on Understanding Cognition through Building Brain Inspired Robots

> A news article : Soon Robots will take human like decision

Progamming a Robotic Car (Google Driverless Car)

 

 Have you ever wondered how Google's autonomous car works? It takes just a little bit of help to build your own autonomous car or an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Prophecies of human-less cars and aircrafts have now become a reality. Want to be a part of the fulfilling prophecy, here's a chance.

Udacity presents a course on "Programming a Robotic Car", which equips you with every tool to bring about your own robotic car. Ready to build your own Google car?

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 1

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 2

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 3

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 4

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 5

Progamming a Robotic Car: Unit 6

Progamming a Robotic Car:  Q & A 

Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments

   

Motion planning in a dynamic environment involves, solving both the path planning and velocity planning problems simultaneously, hence a difficult proposition. It is a combination of a kinematic problem of path planning and a dynamic problem which takes into consideration the robot dynamics, and the various differential constrains. Problems related to computational complexity and non availability of a solution exists in relation to dynamic environments for motion planning.

Steven M. LaValle, University of Illinois, provides a 4 part lecture series on, "Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments"

Part 1: Living in C-Space

Part 2: Motion Planning - Finding the Path

Part 3: Dynamic Environments - Modeling Issues

Part 4: Dynamic Environments - Methods

The slides for the lecture are found here.