RESEARCH TRACK 1 ASSIGNMENT 1

Goal Of The Assignment

The aim of this assignment is create a python node that:

1. Give ability to robot distinguish between silver and golden tokens.
2. Find the closest silver token and grab it.
3. After grabing silver token, find closest golden token and release the silver token near to golden one.
4. Repeat these prosesses whitout using same silver and golden tokens until there are no silver tokens left.

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Installation

The simulator requires a Python 2.7 installation, the pygame library, PyPyBox2D, and PyYAML.

Pygame, unfortunately, can be tricky (though not impossible) to install in virtual environments. If you are using pip, you might try pip install hg+https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame, or you could use your operating system's package manager. Windows users could use Portable Python. PyPyBox2D and PyYAML are more forgiving, and should install just fine using pip or easy_install.

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How To Run

The solutions of the assignment can be found in the solutions (python_simulator/robot-sim/solutions) file. In this directory, there are three different solutions of the assignment:

• Not_autonomous_solution.py
• Semi_autonomous_solution.py
• Full_autonomous_solution.py

To run these solutions in the simulator cd to robot-sim directory, use run.py, passing it the file names.

• Not autonomous → $ python run.py solutions/Not_autonomous_solution.py
• Semi autonomous → $ python run.py solutions/Semi_autonomous_solution.py
• Full autonomous → $ python run.py solutions/Full_autonomous_solution.py

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Troubleshooting

When running python run.py <file>, you may be presented with an error: ImportError: No module named 'robot'. This may be due to a conflict between sr.tools and sr.robot. To resolve, symlink simulator/sr/robot to the location of sr.tools.

On Ubuntu, this can be accomplished by:

• Find the location of srtools: pip show sr.tools
• Get the location. In my case this was /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages
• Create symlink: ln -s path/to/simulator/sr/robot /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/sr/

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Not Autonomous Solution

In this solution the path of the robot already given with two array:

• silver_tokens_offset_number = [3,2,1,0,5,4]
• golden_tokens_offset_number = [11,10,9,8,7,6]

First of all robot will search and find the silver token which offset number is equal to the first element of the silver_tokens_offset_number array, then it will grab it. When graping is done, robot will search for golden token token which offset number is equal to the first element of the golden_tokens_offset_number array and it will release the silver token near to golden token and the process will continue with the other elements of the both arrays, respectively until all the elements of arrays are processed.

Note: The issue of this solution is you have to find the offset numbers of tokens and write in the arrays manually.

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Semi Autonomous Solution

The Semi autonomous solution can be thought of as upgrading Non autonomous solution to become more autonomous. The issue of manually entering offset numbers to the arrays found the solution here. Now robot capable of:

• Finding closest silver token and grabing it.
• Finding closest golden token and releasing silver token near to golden token.
• Not using already taken silver and golden tokens.
• Ending task when all 12 tokens are used.

Note: Although the robot's autonomous level increases with this solution, the user must specify the total token number manually in the code.

 if len(Taken_tokens)==12:                       

    		print("Well done assignment completed successfully")

    		exit()

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Full Autonomous Solution

In this solution "manually entering" issues from Not autonomous and semi autonomous solutions are solved. After using all tokens our robot turning 360 degree to check if there is any silver token left if not ending program. Now our robot capable of:

• Finding closest silver token and grabing it.
• Finding closest golden token and releasing silver token near to golden token.
• Not using already taken silver and golden tokens.
• Ending task when there is no silver token left.

  if offset in Taken_tokens:                    

		turn(+40, 0.1)                       
  		print("Looking for not already taken Silver Token")
		complete = complete + 1  
		
  		if complete == 24:    
				print("I turned 360 degree and couldn`t see any not taken  silver Token")
				print("MISSION COMPLETE")
				exit()        # And the System because there is no any silver token left

Note: When integer variable coplete is equal to 24 this mean our Robot turned 360 degree. Turn(40,0.1) function is turning our robot 15 degree (15*24=360).

Flowchart Of The Full Autonomous Solution

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Functionalities And Informations About Robot API

The API for controlling a simulated robot is designed to be as similar as possible to the SR API.

Motors

The simulated robot has two motors configured for skid steering, connected to a two-output Motor Board. The left motor is connected to output 0 and the right motor to output 1.

The Motor Board API is identical to that of the SR API, except that motor boards cannot be addressed by serial number. So, to turn on the spot at one quarter of full power, one might write the following:

R.motors[0].m0.power = 25
R.motors[0].m1.power = -25

The Grabber

The robot is equipped with a grabber, capable of picking up a token which is in front of the robot and within 0.4 metres of the robot's centre. To pick up a token, call the R.grab method:

success = R.grab()

The R.grab function returns True if a token was successfully picked up, or False otherwise. If the robot is already holding a token, it will throw an AlreadyHoldingSomethingException.

To drop the token, call the R.release method.

Cable-tie flails are not implemented.

Vision

To help the robot find tokens and navigate, each token has markers stuck to it, as does each wall. The R.see method returns a list of all the markers the robot can see, as Marker objects. The robot can only see markers which it is facing towards.

Each Marker object has the following attributes:

• info: a MarkerInfo object describing the marker itself. Has the following attributes:

  • code: the numeric code of the marker.

  • marker_type: the type of object the marker is attached to (either MARKER_TOKEN_GOLD, MARKER_TOKEN_SILVER or MARKER_ARENA).

  • offset: offset of the numeric code of the marker from the lowest numbered marker of its type. For example, token number 3 has the code 43, but offset 3.

  • size: the size that the marker would be in the real game, for compatibility with the SR API.

• centre: the location of the marker in polar coordinates, as a PolarCoord object. Has the following attributes:

  • length: the distance from the centre of the robot to the object (in metres).

  • rot_y: rotation about the Y axis in degrees.

• dist: an alias for centre.length

• res: the value of the res parameter of R.see, for compatibility with the SR API.

• rot_y: an alias for centre.rot_y

• timestamp: the time at which the marker was seen (when R.see was called).

For example, the following code lists all of the markers the robot can see:

markers = R.see()
print "I can see", len(markers), "markers:"
for m in markers:
    if m.info.marker_type in (MARKER_TOKEN_GOLD, MARKER_TOKEN_SILVER):
        print " - Token {0} is {1} metres away".format( m.info.offset, m.dist )
    elif m.info.marker_type == MARKER_ARENA:
        print " - Arena marker {0} is {1} metres away".format( m.info.offset, m.dist )

Conclusion

As a result our robot fully capable of finding silver and golden tokens and successfully completing the assigned task no matter how many tokens. The robot can be improved by the following methods:

• Increasing the robot's field of view
• Avoiding other tokens

Note: Now our robot fully autonomous but if the number of the silver and golden tokens are not equal and the number of the silver tokens is more than golden tokens number our program can be crash.