"After all, when you come down to it, how much did Robot B9 ACTUALLY do for Will Robinson?"

Didn't he have an increadibly innate sense of danger? If only Sparkfun sold the danger sensor :).

This looks like a great project and I think it will be very inspiring for other roboteurs,  I really like your sketup design.  Nice form.  I was always intimidated creating arms out of Servos.  Kind of like T-Rex arms, but they look great.  I think they could be really expressive too.  For example, you could give them the imposing gun slinger pose, or the "shrug", lots of potential.

I have not released MRL 15 because there still some work that needs to be done with the dependency management sub-system.  MRL now uses Apache Ivy to manage build time & run time dependencies.

Open source projects are amazing.  Sphinx 4, OpenCV, Freetts, Player Stage, JGaph, the list goes on and on.  But one of the challenges of OpenSource is all of these projects have their own release cycles and the dependency management of multiple projects becomes very complexe quickly.  Typically wrong, or missing dependencies is one of the biggest stopping blocks open source users encounter.

Now MRL uses Ivy similar to yum or apt-get.  All the sub-system dependencies are organized and stabalized in a repo here http://myrobotlab.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/myrobotlab/thirdParty/repo/ .  Additionally, this system can be used to get only the modules desired, which makes a lean and clean system.

So that is how its suppose to work in "theory"... of course the implementation is not quite done and it will take some work to finish.

You mentioned that you still were waiting on some hardware components.  It has been my personal experience at this point most robots have a very short uptime life.  This can be due to batteries running out, hardware failing, or certain hardware not existing.  Also it can be more challenging to develop on robotic hardware, due to lack of screen, keyboard or other necessary human interface devices missing from the system.

MRL can be loaded on your personal computer, and developed there in Python or Java and then at some point moved to your robotic hardware.  I would suggest starting this way so at least you become familiar with the software to a degree, since your hardware setup is not finished.  You certainly can develop on the SBC if that is your preference, you will have to guide in that regard.

For example, it would be helpful to me to know what exactly is hooked up currently and powered.  Do you have the SBC on a plugged in power supply?  Is the Arduino Mega currently plugged in.

To Start:

• download the zip file located here http://myrobotlab.googlecode.com/files/438.439M.20120307.2105.zip
• unzip in a convient directory - on your Ubuntu SBC or personal computer or both
  
• open a terminal or command shell and go to the directory you unzipped the software
• run update.bat or update.sh depending on operating system - this will load/update ALL Service modules - as I stated before the idea was to load only the Service desired, but for convienence (and MRL15 still needs work) running the update will get you all the modules
  On the system I was using at the time it looks like this :
  
• You might want to walk away, as it will take some time to complete.  After it has completed doubleclick the myrobotlab.bat or myrobotlab.sh depending on operating system
• click the tab which starts with "BORG" - This is the Runtime Service and allows you to create or remove new Services.  The gray items are suppose to represent non-loaded modules, but this is a bug (we just loaded everything in the previous step)
  
• highlight the Jython service - hit the east pointing arrow button at the top.  This should load a running Jython service - name it "jython" it might take a while to show up on the right (this has to do with the dependency manager bug :P )
• 
• when the jython Service loads the jython tab will appear. Click it.  There are several example scripts which you can load. Since you are interested speech recognition & commands load the examples->speech->sayThings.py
• 
  

  Press the exec button once.

• If you have an enabled microphone, what "should" happen is you should be able to say - hello | forward | back | stop | turn left | turn right | spin | power off
• It "should" say what it recognized - initially on the first utterance it downloads from google speech synthesis a mp3 file into an audio cache. Subsequent utterances will be very responsive.
• Let me know how far you get.
  When I ran it I found that the utterance triggered an incorrect recognition (feedback loop).  An isPeaking event is supposed to fire and prevent recognition of its own utterance.  This is on windows box (haven't tried it on Linux) but suspect the result will be the same.  Probably the biggest factor is the fact of using a microphone so close to the speakers.  I'll look into it later.
• When we run into a bug or coding problem I should be able to update the myrobotlab.jar  on the google code site, and you should be able to double click or run update.bat (sh) when you wish to get the update.  It should be very very quick - no navigating, no download and copying, only things which need to be updated will be updated.

Hopefully, this is enough to get you started.

The issue is I dont have any 64 bit machines.  By the way, are you getting email notifications of new comments? Just wondering what all is working or not working.

I have added an amd64 configuration set to the repo, you should be able to proceed

Its nice to hear that some parts are beginning to work. I've successfully run the OpenCV Service from my newly installed  Ubuntu 11.10

It has been a while since I did much to the filters, but here I've added a Lucas Kanade Optical track point on my eye.  This point will typically stabalize and track through the video stream.  I noticed my laptop camera is very slow.  The fastest camera I have worked with would be the Kinect.

The OpenCVFrameGrabber was designed to work with V4L(2)  so it should be able to pick up /dev/video0 .  That is what I have by default.  If nothing happens, you might want to send me the log after your attempt to start a capture.

http://myrobotlab.org/content/basic-steps-arduino-and-servo-services

This might shed some light on what is "supposed" to happen.  Unfortunately, I do not have hardware at the moment, so I can't do a video tutorial :P

Chrome browser now works with the WYSIWYG editor here...
Back at the lab (Yay) ... will be doing robust Servo testing (GUI & Jython).
Has the Arduino-Mega come off the boat yet ?

Ok, finally really starting to work on the Arduino / Mega.  At the moment I'm creating a AJAX/JSON interface for it, originally I was inspired by XicoMBD from MRL - (http://letsmakerobots.com/node/22139).  He made a great interface for one in Processing.

This one will be potentially accessable from any browser anywhere...  An optional (localhost only & authentication properties will be added)

But what a nifty concept, the idea that your arduino can be plugged in and accessable from anywhere in the world with no client software needed except a browser..

Here's the gui sofar..

This will be changeable from Duemilanove to Mega too..

I finally found & read the Dagu manual the motor controller...   This is just another 2-bit (no pun intended) motor controller, and I just overhauled the Motor GUI.  (I attached the manual)

I think we are good to try it...  If it's hooked up.

I would recommend having it tethered and powered, with the wheels off the ground.  So that if anything does go wrong it doesn't smash itself into the wall, or jump down a flight of stairs.

I'd be very interested in getting the encoder data in, but at the moment we can start with simple control.

Do you have a Mega attached to it?

If you load a Mega, then a Motor - You can attach the Motor to the Mega - choosing the PWM & direction pin. Then grab a joystick and you need just one line of code to control the speed and direction of the motor with the joystick.

What say you DWR..  are you ready ???

Here is a start ...

You'll need the latest bleeding edge.

The following is a script which I start an MRL instance - drop it and I will have joystick speed control over a motor attached to an Arduino (328 in my case).

You'll need to tweek it for your system.  The Joystick name you'll need to record - add a joystick - connect - then stop recording - and look at the gui_<date>.py script generated in the .myrobotlab directory - it will have the full name (as it is in the gui) for the joystick device you want the motor connected to.

from java.lang import Float

 

motorPWMPin = 9

motorDirectionPin = 8

 

runtime.createAndStart("arduino","Arduino")

# arduino.setBoard("mega2560")

arduino.setBoard("atmega328")

arduino.setSerialDevice("/dev/ttyUSB1",57600,8,1,0)

sleep(2)

arduino.pinMode(16,0)

arduino.analogReadPollingStart(16)

sleep(2)

arduino.pinMode(16,0)

arduino.analogReadPollingStop(16)

runtime.createAndStart("motor01","Motor")

 

#arduino.motorAttach("motor01",object)

arduino.motorAttach("motor01", motorPWMPin, motorDirectionPin)

 

runtime.createAndStart("joystick","Joystick")

 

joystick.setController("0 - Logitech Logitech Cordless RumblePad 2")

joystick.startPolling()

motor01.subscribe("YAxisRaw", "joystick", "move", Float(0).getClass()) 

 

motor01.publishState()

arduino.publishState()

joystick.publishState()

• Creates a Motor, Arduino & Joystick service
• Sets the board type of the Arduino
• connects MRL to the Arduino
• sleeps for 2 seconds after connecting - because serial ports are a pain
• sets the pin mode on one of the analog pins
• starts a trace you can see in the oscope on one of the analog pins - then runs it for 2 seconds
• turns off the trace
• attaches the Motor to the Arduino
• sets the joystick to the appropriate device on my computer
• starts polling info for the joystick
• makes the motor subscribe to YAxisRaw events from the Joystick
• publishes all the current states of the services (theoretically to update the gui - but that still needs some work)

After I run this script I can move one of my joysticks on the gamepad up or down and the motor will change direction and speed accordingly

Make sure you load the Arduino with the latest MRLComm.ino - the new robust serial communication is "the bomb"

Other Erratta :
My motor is a 6V DC 293 rpm gear motor.  It takes a whollop to move, almost 90% power - but once it finally starts moving you can slow it down to near 30% power before it stops.  Auto-ramping (where if the motor knows its at rest and must overshoot in order to move accurately) might be a nice feature to add..

I took a peek underneath Houston's skirt....

uh.. very neat & clean (as all robot privates should be) - 
I was wondering how you built your cables - was it a sleeve that you ran wires through? 
If so - where do you get it?

And Heeeeeeerrrrreee's   Hooouuuussttoonnn......

Welcome Houstons very own Service module.
He's stronger faster, and 1000 x quicker than before.

With a single install of your bonifide Houston module - you have instant access to all the many ... many subcomponents..   All wrapped up in a convienent, slick package !

But Wait, There's More !

Jython code is reduced to just a few lines - almost anyone can type this !

from org.myrobotlab.service import Houston

 

houston = runtime.createAndStart("houston","Houston")

houston.initialize("mega2560","/dev/ttyACM0")

houston.systemTest()

Look at all that room to do more exciting stuff !  Like neural-nets, state machines and fuzzy logic !!!

But Wait, There's More !

started service page - http://myrobotlab.org/service/houston

And started to understand myself the benefit an initialization of all sub - services.

933 - fixed dependency references for houston ...
So, you should not have to update everything - just right click on Houston and "install" ... although Houston does have quite a few :)