Senior Project

In the midst of all the business, I suppose I should let everyone know what I'm currently working on. It seems to be an interesting project, one with intrigue, betrayal, robots and a game of tag. So this is what I've been up to most recently. It's coming along quite nicely too.

First off, Dr. Yangquan Chen at USU has most graciously allowed us to use his MASNet platform. That is, the set of robots with locating camera. These robots will be programmed to play games of tag, in teams of two. Two seeker robots, knowing the position of all four robots, will attempt to trap one of the two hider robots, which will only know the position of the robots it can 'see.' Programming this ability to see was my job, and I think it worked out rather well. The host program, called Robot Commander, already takes the camera image and finds coordinates for each robot on the playing field, and I just tweaked it a bit to check the pixels in between the robot coordinates for a bit of white (or green, if we choose to upgrade).

The next step after finding relevant information, was to broadcast it to each of the four robots. That is very currently in the process. Once the robots have the information, they need to use it to play their game of tag. That has yet to be done and is the more difficult part of the project. Then, if all goes well, the robots will be given a "social context" flavour, that is, they will be able to betray, change sides, or whatever and the other robots have to adapt. Good times. I'll keep you posted on that progress.