CS 154 Homework #6
Due Sunday, April 18, 2010

Readings for HW 6:

RRT-Connect: An Efficient Approach to Single-Query Path Planning
The original RRT paper by Steven LaValle and James Kuffner. (pdf)

There are several parts to this final HW - and a number of options, as well.

Required for 4/18/2010

• Project Update
  

This is the last project-update before the final demonstrations on April 28. For this update, you don't need to run a formal demo, but you should include the following:


• At least a paragraph on your project's progress since the end-of-March update.
• The task you'd like to demonstrate on April 28 - and what work remains in order to implement that task! - The goal is that there be a manageable amount of work remaining after this update!
• At least one video of your system's new capabilities
• As always, videos of things not working well are a good idea to keep around, if you happen to take one! Any additional images or movies as welcome, too.




• NEW: due 5/7 for teams contributing a judge...
  
  Slam visualization survey
  

This is a survey that is being taken as part of the postgraduate work by Alex Kozlov at the University of Aukland in New Zealand, which has an active SLAM research group. The goal is to study how different visualizations affect obsrevers' understanding of mapping algorithms.

Your task is to simply take that survey - as a team. Alex estimates that it will take about 30 minutes to complete: you watch a number of videos of renderings of SLAM algorithms and then answer multiple-choice or single-sentence questions about what you observed.

Simply add your answers into a copy of this "survey script": Evaluation_detection.doc - and then post that document to your wiki site under assignment 6.

All of the videos are online, but you can download the whole set of them from this one zip file: SLAM_survey.zip

I will collect all of the survey results and send them to Alex, who is very excited about having the class participate! (We have the "right" answers to share afterwards, as well... .)

Choices for 4/18/2010 -- or later.    See "Robotics: Judgment Day" for extensions...

• Option 1   -   Written problems on path planning
  
  This link should take you to the three problems, which cover manipulator kinematics, configuration space complexity, and some path-planning exercises.


• Option 2   -   Implementing BUGs!
  
  This link describes the requirements for implementing the Bug0, Bug1, and Bug2 algorithms in a simply simulator very similar to the one used for the MCL assignment.
  Here is the bug-friendly version of that simulator, bugPython.zip


• Option 3   -   High-DOF motion planning
  
  This link describes the 4 degree-of-freedom planning problem to solve - again using a slightly modified version of the MCL assignment's simulator. Here is the high-DOF version of that simulator, motionPlanning.zip


• Extra!   -   Robotics: Judgment Day
  
  Friday, April 23, 2010 from 11am to 2pm is the Claremont School District's annual robot contest, involving mixed-age teams and their Lego Mondstorms NXT robots. It is at CGU's "Descombes Quadrangle" just two blocks southwest of HMC. Each year CS 154 students are the judges for the contest, which includes a poster and robot-trial events.
  
  Judges are needed from 11-1 (for interviews and poster evaluation) and from 12-2 (for timing/supervising the competitions). Lunch will be provided around 12:30.
  
  Incentives If a (nonempty!) subset of a team judges for this event, that will count as one of the three parts of this assignment (above).
  
  In addition, if you choose the Claremont-contest judging, then your team's deadline for the other option among the problems above is extended until the final project deadline: May 7, 2010.
  
  Incentive or no, I would encourage you to consider checking out what the students have done and helping judge the event! Plus, it's great fun!
  
  If you're interested, please let me know... and thanks!!