Action Descriptions

15-494: Cognitive Robotics, Spring 2009
Richard Ha

Implemented Actions

tapGroundPoint

The first of the actions available to the Chiara. When asked to perform this action, the Chiara will quite literally move the tip of its leg to a point directly above a provided point p and then tap the point on the ground. The point above p is a pound-defined constant in the code where it is exactly 50.0mm above p. There was also a second option available for implementing this action which was moving exactly one joint such that it would move the leg in a short arc back and forth while tapping. It was less preferable over the other option because it looked awkward and mechanical. The other was chosen for seeming to be a more natural tapping behavior.

Such a feature along with the next action could be used for interesting behaviors such as the Chiara pushing buttons to communicate or even tapping out messages in Morse code.

It is important to note that the z-coordinate is ignored for this action and the next one too. One could supply a floating point infinity as the z-coordinate and it would have no effect on its actions.

pushPoint

Similar to to tapGroundPoint but rather than just tapping the ground, the Chiara tries to reach that is -10mm under the ground. This just makes the Chiara put a little bit more strength into its leg such that it could probably do better in activities such as pushing buttons without excessively wearing down the gears in the servos.

pokePoint

Unlike the previous two actions, which were actions specialized for interacting with the planar world, this action can be applied to all of 3D space within range. Given a point p, the Chiara moves the tip of its leg to p, moves the leg back by rotating the RFr:elvtr joint away from the point and then finishes by moving the leg in the opposite direction through and past p. This is how it performs a poking action.

This gives the Chiara a larger range over what it can interact with in its own environment. Now it is not restricted to the ground anymore.

flickPoint

reachPoint

grabObject

Summary and Future Work

Despite what I was able to do with the Chiaras, there is a lot of for improvement and other work that could be done.

Diagram 3

The shoulder joint rotated upwards by 90 degrees to allow the RFr leg to be used as a second (makeshift) planar leg.