**** Robotics Seminar ****

Sony AIBO Robot (ERS-7)
*RoboShow*
When:Monday, May 10th @ 10am for Invited Guests and 1pm for the Public
Where:ILS conference room (SS262)
What:Join us for presentations by special guests from UAlbany and CMU and stay to see the Sony AIBO talk, navigate, and play ball during students' experimental research project demonstrations!


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Spring 2004
CSI 660/445
Instructor: Prof. Tomek Strzalkowski
Credits: 3
Day/Time: Tuesday 12-1 & Friday 9-11
Room: ILS Conference Room and Labs, SS-262/SS-259
Contact information:

Prof. Tomek Strzalkowski -- tomek@cs.albany.edu
Rob Salkin -- salkin@cs.albany.edu

Course Description

The emergence of commercial-off-the shelf robotic devices capable of performing non-trivial functions, such as speech, vision and motion (e.g. from SONY), offers a tremendous opportunity to embed research on intelligent systems into such autonomous robotic devices. For example, the SONY's Aibo is a mass produced robot that can walk, talk and listen, but while these capabilities are impressive, today's robots still can't effectively communicate with people.

This course is offered to involve interested graduate and undergraduate students in the process of kicking off robotics research at SUNY Albany. This is a hands-on seminar where we will be developing demonstrations for 3 different applications involving SONY Aibo robotic dogs. Several Aibos plus SONY computers will be available. We will be using open source SDK for programming. The culmination will be RoboShow Symposium at SUNY Albany in early May 2004.

The course is open to both graduate and undergraduate students in computer science. Very strong programming skills, motivation and drive, as well as interest in robotics are required. Some background in Artificial Intelligence may be helpful. Graduate students may consider taking CSI-535 Introduction to AI in parallel to this seminar.

Project 1: An Interactive Robotic Companion. We will develop a robotic system to supplement the life of a person, such as an elderly, by providing a companion that reminds of appointments, medication, answers questions.
Project 2: Automatic Map Building. In this project we will create a robot that can explore and map its environment, e.g., part of the building.
Project 3: Collaborative robots. We will develop a limited demonstration of team-working robots playing a ball, in preparation for a possible RoboCup entry.


Schedule
Feb 13Prof. Yang -- Collaboration
Feb 20Group meeting
Feb 27Presentation - Sensors (Min)
Mar 5Presentation - Vision (Russ/Rob)
Mar 12Presentation - Localization (Brian/Ryan)
Mar 19Presentation - Planning (Michelle)
Mar 26Midterm review (graded)
Apr 2Presentation - Multi-agent (Chris/Adam)
Apr 9Class Cancelled - Spring Break
Apr 16Presentation - Wireless (Chris/Shawn)
Apr 23Prep
Apr 28Draft of Final Reports Due to Coordinators
Apr 29Prep for Final Review
Apr 30Final Review
May 5Final Reports Due to Coordinators
May 7-9Prep for RoboShow
May 10*RoboShow*

RoboShow Schedule
10.00 - 10.15Introduction
10.15 - 11.003 Student presentations
11.00 - 12.00Project Demonstrations
12.00 - 1.00Lunch Break
1.00 - 2.00Scott Lenser (CMU)
2.00 - 3.00Public Demo
3.00 - 4.00Huahai Yang (UAlbany/ILS member)
"Agent-assisted collaborative navigation and its impact on human spatial knowledge acquisition"


Links


Projects and Teams

Project 1
Description (ppt)
Prof. Andy Haas & Nobu Shimizu
Brian King
Shawn Turner -- st2750@albany.edu
Ryan N
Michael Groves

Project 2
Description (ppt)
Prof. Tomek Strzalkowski & Min Wu
MingYuan Duan
Yue Li
Zhouxuan Teng
XiaoYu Zheng

  • Nuance Installation - For the robotic companion team.
  • Nuance Developer Guide - For the robotic companion team.
  • Nuance Grammar Guide - For the robotic companion team.
  • Nuance Verifier Guide - For the robotic companion team.
  • Nuance Example Program -- Nuance 8.0 - For the robotic companion team.
  • Nuance Java API -- Nuance 8.0 - For the robotic companion team.
  • Project 3
    Description (ppt)
    Prof. Huahai Yang & Rob Salkin
    Chris Nawrot
    Russell Goldstein
    Adam Salvatori