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ParcMeeting20100404

Page history last edited by Mark Fussell 13 years, 11 months ago

 

Previous Meeting: ParcMeeting20100321

Next Meeting: ParcMeeting20100418

 

Schedule 

April 4th, 2010 -- 3PM to 5PM

 

Prerequisites 

Please make sure to bring a functional "Good Base Mobile Robot" to the meeting.  Either the same one from the previous meeting, or a suitable replacement.  

 

Agenda 

The primary agenda will be based on finishing up Session-1 at ParcCourse compared to where the three teams progressed to on ParcMeeting20100321.

 

The tentative agenda is:

  • Explaining about programming with NXT-G and Robotics:
  • FLL and Robotics -- Maybe another video if people want
  • Doing a fun/simple FLL-like task
    • Robot Activity #1
        • [Check] Break into pairs or triplets
        • [Check] Build a Good Base Mobile Robot (Shooterbot [Nxt2.0], Tribot, CastorBot, Tank-bot [nxt2.0], etc.)
        • Mission #1 -- Make it cross a table (say 4-feet or 6-feet) and return to its starting position
        • Mission #2 -- Cross the table, turn-around, and return to base
        • Mission #3a -- "Patrol" the table.  Go back and forth until a sensor [your choice] detects something.  Stop patrolling and raise alarm.
        • Mission #3b -- "Patrol" the table -- go around in a square.  If detect, raise alarm for 10 seconds.  Continue patrolling (from where left off).
        • Mission #3c -- Add some kind of shooter.  Raise alarm and shoot
    • Team Activity #1 
        • Done Altogether
        • Describe Why You Like Robots (1 minute or less)
        • Describe one of your favorite robots or robot-like entity
        • Look through the 2009 FLL names (or any others you know) and pick one or more names you like
        • Describe a favorite colour
        • Describe another kind of mascot you think is neat  (e.g. Unipegs)
        • Propose 1 or more team names or team-name ideas
        • Someone write it all down on the Wiki at ParcTeamNames
  • Describing the club and what it is about
    • Purpose: Learn about Robots, Build Cool & Useful Robots, Have Fun, Produce an FLL team
    • Values: FLL "Gracious Professionalism" / Other
      • Gracious Professionalism encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community. Fierce competition and mutual gain are not separate notions. Children learn and compete like crazy, but must treat one another with respect and kindness in the process.
    • Adults / Coaches: Inspirations and Supporters, not Doers
    • [MLF: Seems like people are asking to postpone this] 
  • Overview of Available Resources (Wiki, Email, Blog, Robots, Table, Camera, etc.)
    • [MLF: Seems like people are asking to postpone this] 
  •  

 

 

Other agenda topics are likely to be:

  • Next meeting -- Where, Food, Leader

 

Resources

  • [Check] Meeting Location -- Doreen's house [location by email]
  • Kids -- How many to attend [Maya, Zach, ...]
  • Computers -- How many that are NXT-G setup [Mark = 2, ...]
  • NXTs -- How many [Mark = 2]
  • [Check] Floor space for multiple running robots (see Robot Activity #1)
  • [Check] Projector
  • [Check] Food, Drinks, Utensils

 

 

Subgroup & Post Meeting Special Topics

 

A Well Behaved Robot

One of the more important, advanced, and (unfortunately) complicated aspects to work with in NXT-G is being able to "Move a distance or until a sensor event".  The problems are:

   * NXT-G has no 'event' processing / interrupt capability within its loops (RCX actually had that)

   * The smarter blocks like 'Move' are blocking when they do things like go-until-sensor

   * A couple of the sensor blocks are a little more obscure than you would expect, requiring a 'reset' before use

 

An approach to solving this problem that was showed today was:

   * Turn a move/motor on -- forever, so the block finishes immediately

   * Enter into a loop that

      * Reads one sensor (Sensor A), and immediately continues [a yellow block]

      * Reads a second sensor (Sensor B), and immediately continues [another yellow block]

      * Combines the Logic output (the "Yay") of the two readings together, and immediately continues [dark orange block] 

      * Loops unless the Logic Block (an "Or" of either sensor) is true [loop until logic]

  * Then stops the motor

 

The core example is below.  This one uses a timer, which is what Team-2 used:

 

The Logic block is set as follows to produce the 'Or' output:

 

The motor is started and immediately goes into the loop block.  The loop block will run until either the yellow Timer is triggered or the yellow Ultrasonic is triggered.  Both of these blocks immediately continue to the next step and do not block.  If either is triggered by the end of the loop, the loop stops and goes to the next green block, which stops forward progress.  Note-1: This loop is a "tight loop" and executes over-and-over rapidly.  None of the blocks in the loop wait for anything.  Note-2:  The outputs of the yellow blocks are the logic check output (the [Check]/[X]), and not the timer or ultrasound value.  You have to open the Data Hub to get access to these outputs.  Expanded the center block looks like this:

 

 

For both the Timer and the Rotation sensor, you need to reset them before the loop.  So the full 'algorithm' / idiom is:

Where the added block after the first move is a reset [notice its little icons], and not a reading.

 

After this loop finishes, you need to figure out why it stopped.  The simplest approach is to just check one of the sensors again.  The following checks the ultrasound value via an 'if'.

 

And then putting all this into a nice big patrolling-kind-of-loop, you get:

 

The idiom is not trivial, but I am hoping it is fairly intelligible after (1) Getting a feeling of real-time systems, blocking, and event issues (2) Just seeing and trying it.  Comparing this to how a different language might achieve the same results [and efficiency issues of both], would be interesting.

 

 

NXC

There are alternative languages for the NXT.  One simple one is NXC, so I demoed a simple version of that.  An example of NXC is below:

$ more test1.nxc 
task main() {
   TextOut(0, LCD_LINE1, "Hello World");
   Wait(SEC_10);
}

 

And decompiled NBC / Assembly Language for the same looks like the below.  It is much more complicated and less useful unless you really want to study machine / assembly language:

$ more test1.nbc 

; test1.rxe
; -------------- variable declarations --------------
dseg    segment
;------- definitions -------
c000C_def       struct
sw000D  sword
sw000E  sword
c000C_def       ends
c000A_def       struct
sb000B  sbyte
c000C   c000C_def       
a000F   byte[]
ul0011  dword
c000A_def       ends
;------- declarations -------
ul0000  dword   
sl0001  sdword  
sl0002  sdword  
sl0003  sdword  
ul0004  dword   
uw0005  word    
sb0006  sbyte   
ub0007  byte    
ub0008  byte    
sb0009  sbyte   16
c000A   c000A_def       
a0012   sdword[]        
a0014   byte[]  
a0016   byte[]  'Hello World'
dseg    ends
; -------------- program code --------------
        thread t000
        arrinit a0012, sb0006, sb0009
        set     sl0001, 0x0
        mov     sl0003, sl0001
        set     sl0001, 0x38
        mov     sl0002, sl0001
        strcat  a0014, a0016
        mov     c000A.c000C.sw000D, sl0003
        mov     c000A.c000C.sw000E, sl0002
        set     c000A.ul0011, 0x0
        mov     c000A.a000F, a0014
        syscall DrawText, c000A
        mov     sl0001, c000A.sb000B
        set     sl0001, 0x2710
        mov     uw0005, sl0001
        subcall t001, ub0007
        exit    -1, -1
        endt
;-----------------------------------
        thread t001
        gettick ul0000
        add     ul0004, ul0000, uw0005
lbl0030:        gettick ul0000
        brcmp   LT, lbl0030, ul0000, ul0004
        subret  ub0007
        endt

 

 

 

 

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