Cognitive Robotics: Lab 8 & Homework 7

In this lab you will explore Mirage worlds and the particle filter in more detail.

1. Copy the file pushbox.ian into your ~/project/worlds directory. Look through this file for examples of the syntax for defining Mirage worlds.

2. See the Mirage WorldBuilder syntax page for an explanation of the syntax, and how to generate a Mirage world from an ian file. Also see the Mirage Tips page for more explanation of Mirage features.

3. Run the WorldBuilder on pushbox.ian to produce a pushbox.mirage file. (You should be in your project/worlds directory when you do this.)

4. Run Mirage on your pushbox.mirage file, and run the Calliope5KP robot around in your world. Try bumping into movable and immovable objects to see what happens.

1. This exercise will test the particle filter's ability to deal with ambiguity (multi-modal distributions) in a Mirage world, similar to the example shown in lecture. Create a navigation marker consisting of two half-spheres 600 mm apart, 1000 mm in front of the robot. Make them two different colors. At these distances, both should be easily visible in the camera image. (Note: you can make half-spheres by setting the z coordinate to 0 so that the spheres are half embedded in the floor.)

2. Make a second set of navigation markers identical to the first, but put them somewhere else in the world so they're not visible in the initial camera image. They should also have a different orientation, so if the first set are aligned east-west, the second set should be aligned north-south. And they should be far enough away from the first set so that their associated particle distributions don't overlap.

3. Create a behavior that is a subclass of PilotDemo and includes your two sets of navigation markers in its world map. Look at the PushBox1 demo to see how to use the PilotDemo's buildMap() method to set up a map. Model the navigation markers as ellipse shapes, and set their coordinates to reflect their locations in the Mirage world you created.

4. Your behavior should use particleFilter->resetFilter(); to randomize the particles, then use the Pilot's localize operation. You should see two clusters of particles, one in front of each navigation marker. Take a screenshot. Note that you must tell the Pilot what landmarks to use for localization by filling in the landmarks field of the pilot request. You must also give it a MapBuilderRequest object in the landmarkExtractor field, and fill in that request so it knows to look for ellipses of the proper colors.

5. Write code to move the robot from its initial position to a position where only the second navigation marker is visible. You'll want to control when this happens, so use a =TM("go")=> transition.

6. Look at the particles after the robot has moved. Where are they now? Take a screenshot.

7. Do another localization step. What does the distribution look like after this step? Take a screenshot.

Hand in the items listed above by Friday, March 29.