iAward Winners!

The Linux Robotics Framework was announced the winner of this years Callista Tertiary Student category at the Australian Information Industry Association's presentation last night!

This is a fantastic achievement for the students involved in developing the framework and indeed, encouraging recognition of the potential of the LRF and linux based robotics in general.

The team from the Australian National University will now represent Australia in competition against the best of the Asia Pacific region at the APICTA Awards in December.

Site changes

As a laptop on my lounge room floor isn't the best place to host a reliable website, I've taken steps to move it to a more professional hosting provider. This is now complete and all the details have been posted on the forum.

You'll notice the download page now has links to the publicly accessible repository. There will soon be a CONTRIBUTING file in there if you wanted to know how to submit changes.

We've also shamelessly added a 'donate' button on the left. If you would like to support the Linux Robotics Framework, this is an excellent way to help us get out hands on new hardware etc.

Further to these changes, the actual content of the site will be getting completely redone using the Plone CMS server. This will allow easier access for authors to modify the site.

The long night before the big day

It's just gone midnight and we're all here at the ANU finishing up the car. It's all assembled (see our demos page for pictures) and doing what it's supposed to, and the remote interface is working a charm. We're just ironing out a few bugs with the Inertial Management Unit and running through the presentation a few last times. If you're looking for any of us tomorrow, we'll be at the pub.

Crunch Time

The presentation is now 3 days away. The website has been updated (like it?) with a new section on Buzz, our presentation pet project. It's far from complete at the moment but watch this space - it will (should) be working before the presentation on the 21st!

Presentation display - car with arm

It's official - we will be mounting the arm on the car for the final presentation. Cogsy has worked out a way to make remote library calls over WIFI so he is making a Java program for us to use. He stresses that it will be both usable and sexy. I just hope it's done on time.

Stage 3 complete!

Everything has been finished for stage 3, and without any issues. We're still having issues with the stage 2 hardware though so we won't have a release for the moment.

The presentation is looming so workload and stress have increased. Looks like we'll be able to mount the arm on the car for the presentation. Power consumption may be an issue, but with a big-ass battery we should be able to last 10-15 mins...

More issues?

The XML loader is proving to be a little too difficult so we have cut it away for now. This was intended to be a wrapper for a C program anyway so we will not lose any functionality. The GPS is also being uncooperative.

On the upside, though, the new hardware for stage 3 is coming along quite well. We have all learned a lot since we started this project and it's starting to get easier.

More Toys

Ben once again lifted the spirits of the team by handing out more hardware. We have a new, more reliable servo controller from Pololu which is about the size of a 10-cent piece, and a Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) motor controller, also from pololu.

The motor controller can drive motors which utilize 25A continuously. Cogsy claims that the car has a motor which is close to this magnitude. Let's hope we can get it all working without letting the smoke out.

Stage 2 complete?

The deadline for stage 2 has come up and we have a bunch of new components: Servo, Accelerometer, Gyroscope and GPS. It all sounds very exciting but things aren't as peachy as we would have hoped. The Servo and Accelerometer appear to be working with no dramas, but the gyroscope is returning some strange values and the GPS is not locking onto any satellites. Regardless, the show must go on so we will iron out these bugs as we go.

Cogsy is also working on an XML loader which should make the creation of robots a breeze. There are a few problems here at the moment but we'll see how we go.

Open Day

The ANU open day will be held on Saturday Augusts 30 and, as previously mentioned, we will have a stall there showing off our (non-LRF) robotic arm and other robotic hardware. This website should also get a mention.

Hardware Highs and Software Lows

Cogsy has now assembled the arm properly and connected the (mountains) of cable. He has also thrown together a simple C program (not LRF) which can move the arm using two mice. This will be our demo for the open day and we will convert it to the LRF at a later stage.

In other news, the constructors we are using aren't fulfilling our needs. We have discussed a new method for doing constructors but will need to refactor all our existing work. *shrug* we will be thankful when it's all done.

LRF 0.0.1 released!

Version 0.0.1 of the Linux Robotics Framework has now been released. This release includes support for the SRV8T servo controller and the MaxSonar EZ1 sonar range finder hardware. Head over to the downloads page to grab yourself a copy.

Robotic Arm for our presentation

Cogsy came to the meeting today armed with some hardware that we might be able to use at our presentation - a (partly) assembled robotic arm. The arm is made up of 7 servos of varying sizes providing six degrees of freedom and a gripper. The arm may draw 8A of current at 5V which is a bit worrying, but we'll see how we go.

Presentation Ideas

Cogsy arrived today with a rather large robotic car. He tells us that we are free to rip the guts out of the car and fit it out with an NGW100 network gateway and any hardware that we need to get it running. With any luck we will have this thing running around on the presentation.

RSS now available

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More news

The site should be up and running now.
Hooray for the internet.

LRF Webpage: watch this space

Linux Robotics Framework webpage is in it's building stages. Watch this space.
Updated!