Mobile Robotics Experiments with DaNI Developed By: DR. ROBERT KING COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 5 Experiment 1 – LabVIEW and DaNI ........................................................................................... 9 Instructor’s Notes ........................................................................................................... 9 Goals .............................................................................................................................. 9 Required Components .................................................................................................... 9 Background ...................................................................................................................10 Experiment 1-1 DaNI Setup ...........................................................................................10 Establish Communications between DaNI and a host computer using the Hardware Wizard ...........................................................................................................................16 Establish Communications between DaNI and a host without the Hardware Wizard .....29 Creating a Project without the Hardware Wizard ...........................................................34 Experiment 1-2 DaNI Test .............................................................................................38 Experiment 1-3 Evaluate the Operation of an Autonomous Mobile Robot ......................44 Experiment 1-4 Compare Autonomous and Remote Control .........................................46 Experiment 2 – Ultrasonic Transducer Characterization ............................................................53 Instructor’s Notes ..........................................................................................................53 Goal ..............................................................................................................................53 Background ...................................................................................................................53 Experiment 2-1 Characterization with the Roaming VI Graph ........................................53 Experiment 2-2 Introduction to LabVIEW .......................................................................57 Experiment 2-3 Ultrasonic Transducer Characterization ................................................79 Experiment 3 – Motor Control ...................................................................................................83 Instructor’s Notes ..........................................................................................................83 Goal ..............................................................................................................................83 Background ...................................................................................................................83 Experiment 3-1 Open Loop Motor Control .....................................................................83 Experiment 3-2 Closed Loop Motor Control ...................................................................92 Experiment 4 - Kinematics ...................................................................................................... 107 Instructor’s Notes ........................................................................................................ 107 Goal ............................................................................................................................ 107 Background ................................................................................................................. 107 Experiment 4-1 Turning and Rotating .......................................................................... 107 Experiment 4-2 User Choice: LabVIEW Case Structure and Enum Data Type ............ 112 Experiment 4-3 Using Hierarchical Programming to Drive from Start to Goal .............. 117 Experiment 4-4 Steering Frame ................................................................................... 125 Experiment 4-5 Grouping Steering Frame and Other Data in LabVIEW with Arrays and Clusters ....................................................................................................................... 129 Experiment 4-6 LabVIEW State Machine Architecture to Drive from Start to Goal with the Steering Frame ............................................................................................................ 133 Experiment 5 – Perception with PING))).................................................................................. 137 Instructor’s Notes ........................................................................................................ 137 Goal ............................................................................................................................ 137 Background ................................................................................................................. 137 Experiment 5-1 Calibrating PING)))’s Orientation and File IO ...................................... 137 Experiment 5-2 Displaying Perception Data with an XY Graph .................................... 144 Experiment 5-3 Communicating Perception Data to the Host with Network Streams ... 146 Experiment 5-4 Feature Extraction - Identify Edges of an Obstacle ............................. 154 Experiment 5-5 Obstacle Avoidance ............................................................................ 156 Experiment 5-6 Follow a Wall ...................................................................................... 156 Experiment 5-7 Gap feature extraction in the Roaming VI ........................................... 156 Experiment 6 – Localization .................................................................................................... 173 Instructor’s Notes ........................................................................................................ 173 Goal ............................................................................................................................ 173 Background ................................................................................................................. 173 Experiment 6-1 Odometric Localization (Dead Reckoning) .......................................... 173 Experiment 6-2 Localize with Range Data ................................................................... 175 Experiment 6-3 Occupancy grid map ........................................................................... 176 Optional Projects and Competitions ........................................................................................ 177 Obstacle avoidance, Localization and Mapping ........................................................... 177 Obstacle avoidance, Localization, Mapping, and Object Recognition .......................... 177 Obstacle Avoidance, Mapping, and Navigation ............................................................ 177 Hardware Enhancement .............................................................................................. 178 Introduction Robotics and automation are becoming an essential component of engineering and scientific systems and consequently they are very important topics for study by engineering and science students. Furthermore, robotics is built on fundamentals like transducer characterization, motor control, data acquisition, mechanics of drive trains, network communication, computer vision, pattern recognition, kinematics, path planning, and others that are also fundamental to other fields, manufacturing, for instance. Learning these fundamentals can be challenging and fun by doing experiments with a capable mobile robot. The National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW Robotics Kit and LabVIEW provide an active-learning supplement to traditional robotics textbooks and curriculum by providing multiple capabilities in a compact and expandable kit. National Instruments Corporation, located in Austin Texas, has been providing hardware and software that engineers and scientists use to design, prototype, and deploy systems for test, control, and embedded applications since 1976. The company has offices in over 40 countries, and NI open graphical programming software and modular hardware is used by more than 30,000 companies annually. More information is available at http://www.ni.com. The experiments described herein show how to communicate between a host computer and a robot, how robots communicate with sensors to obtain data from the robot's environment, how to implement algorithms for localization and planning in LabVIEW software, how the robot communicates with actuators to control sensor motion and driving motion, how to implement algorithms for controlling sensor and motion. National Instruments LabVIEW is a graphical programming environment used by millions of engineers and scientists to develop sophisticated measurement, test, and control systems using intuitive graphical icons and wires that resemble a flowchart. It facilitates integration with thousands of hardware devices and provides hundreds of built-in libraries for advanced analysis and data visualization – all for creating virtual instrumentation. The LabVIEW platform is scalable across multiple targets and operating systems. The NI LabVIEW robotics kit includes DaNI: an assembled robot with