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Summer Camp - Introductory Summer Camp - Advanced Summer Camp - Underwater Robotics & Communication Faculty


Summer Training - Autonomous Robotics

Synopsis

  • Faculty from India and abroad.
  • Practical competition based learning style.
  • Free kit for each student (kit description below).
  • Access to discounted parts at the end of the workshop.
  • Cost of entire training program including taxes.
  • Study material on CD.
  • Certificate.

Keeping to our commitment of offering our students the best possible learning experience, IURS has once again revised its approach and course material to suit the demands and needs of students better. This year, the stundets will not only get a theoretical introduction to robotics but also provides them an expanded opportunity to work with vision based robots, since vision is the most low-cost way of adding complex intelligence to a robot.

While we will follow the pattern of involved theoretical teaching and also practical exercises structured like competitions, the focus of our theoretical sessions will also now be on demonstrating to students how to use concepts of Artificial Intelligence, Image Processing and Machine Learning practically.

Gone are the complexities of grasping mathematical ideas, replaced with step-by-step application procedures.

IURS has engaged not only its own team members, educated in India and abroad, as faculty but also talented researchers who hail from or studied in USA, Canada, Germany, Hungary and Romania.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with programming in any language.

Registration Deadline : 20 Jun 2009

Dates:

1 Jul 2009 - 10 Jul 2009

Timings: 9.00AM to 4.00PM.

Duration: 50 Hrs of supervised training.

Venue

Indian Retail School
New Delhi

Accommodation: Assitance in securing a place will be provided - please ensure you inform us that you will need accommodation.

Hands on Guided Tasks

Project
Description
Build your first robot

This project will be utilized to familiarize the summer camp participants with the concepts of designing and building a small robot that is capable of performing multiple tasks. As part of the project, students will be introduced to and have an opporty to work on:

  • Programming the ATMega AVR.
  • Sensor interfacing & calibration.
  • Actuator control.
  • Mechanical design & construction of a small robot.

To complete the goal of introducing students to robotics the following robotic tasks will be taught and a mini-competition held between students:

  • Line following robot.
  • Flashlight follwing robot.
  • Obstacle avoidance robot.

The goal of the exercise will be not only to teach students to make their robots work in controlled simple basic environments but also the ability to interact with other robotic devices that add a falvor of dynamism by interfacing with simpler sensors like Light Sensors and IR Distance Sensors.

Labyrinth escape

This next project will deal with the students being taught to make their robots solve a maze by locating its exit point, irrespective of where they were placed in the maze.

Once again a mini-competition will be held and special certificates to the winners.

Invisible driver
Ever wished that a car could drive itself? Well, we'll walk you through the basic steps of achieving that in the course.

The robots will be programmed to stay within their lanes and drive to the target destination. On the way, they will encounter a stop sign at which the robot will stop and then restart. The task will introduce students to using computer vision with their robots.

Students will also get to learn how to interface their robots to PCs so that more heavy duty computation can be carried out there.

Winners of the mini-competition will be awarded special certificates at this point too!

The explorer
This task is inspired by the space exploring robots and intended to provide students with an introduction on how to build robots that are able to handle more complex tasks.

Via this project students will be introduced to higher concepts of using computer vision for tasks such as identifying objects, avoiding obstacles and exploration of a given space. The robots will be given a maximum time to explore the arena and will be required to avoid obstacles using only computer vision and also count number of targets.

Special certificates to winners of the mini-competition at this stage as well.

Soccer game
In a first, we will teach the students how to build simple autonomous soccer playing robots.

With an overhead camera, the students will make robots that will allow them to locate the ball in the arena, the oponent and the goal. The task will be as simple as getting the ball to the goal and avoiding the oponent.

This project will use concepts from of all the tasks taught thus far in the course. Though it sounds hard to achieve, once we teach it, it will be easier than you think!

Special certificates to winners of this competition as well.

Special Demonstrations

The students will not program these tasks themselves, however, they will be given an explanation and demo of how these can be implemented.

PID Control
Theory behind PID control will be explained to the students so that they may achieve better control of the robot. A PID implementation will be demoed and the students will work on getting experience in how to determine thresholds to tune the filter's offshoot and rise time.

Path Planning

Students will not only be taught path planning algorithms but will also witness how a computer path planning algorithm implementation works. The discussion and demo will show them how to build a robot that visits multiple points, before reaching the target. Being autonomous, changes in waypoints will be recompute the path in real time.


Robots that can be built using techniques taught

  • Micromouse / Maze Solver.
  • Autonomous all-terrain rover.
  • Autonomous underwater robot (AUV).
  • Autonomous sea-surface robot (ASV).
  • Embedded microcontroller based image processing object tracking robot.
  • Computer controlled autonomous robot.
  • Robotic Soccer.

Kit Contents

ATMega16 Based Development Board
RS-232 Communication Port
LCD Screen
Sharp GP2D120 IR Distance Sensor
Light Sensors
AVR In-System Programmer
Chassis with wheels & castors
DC motors
12V DC Adapter
Study material and manual

Course Contents

  • Introduction to Robotics
    • What is a robot?
    • History of robotics.
    • Tyes of robots.
    • Applications of robotics.
    • Current and future market scenarios.
       
  • Robotic Locomotion
    • Introduction to Terrestrial, Underwater and Aerial locomotion.
    • Different types of motors (DC, Stepper, Servo).
    • Gear trains and ratios.
       
  • Introduction to Microcontroller
    • Types of Microcontrollers.
    • Choosing a Microcontroller for a specific purpose.
    • Controller families (OOPic, Handyboard, Mindstorms).
    • Programming the ATMega AVR.
    • Interfacing and controlling actuators.
    • Sensor interfacing, processing and calibration.
    • Communication with secondary controllers or PCs.
       
  • Autonomous Robots
    • Introduction to Artificial Intelligence concepts.
    • PC based robot control.
    • PID control.
    • Autonomous navigational systems.
      • Dead reckoning.
      • Triangulation & trilateration.
      • WiFi, RFID and Visual SLAM.
      • Laser scanner based mapping.
      • RFID localization.
      • GPS.
  • Sensor Arrays
    • Passive and active sensors.
    • Sensor design.
    • Interfacing - Analog, Digital, I2C.
    • Optimum positioning of sensors.
    • Ensuring optimum sensor outputs.
    • Advanced sensors
      • Compass sensors.
      • INS.
      • Gyros & accelerometers.
      • NorthStar.
      • Swiss Ranger.
      • Sonar.
      • Laser Range Finder (LRF).
      • IR Camera.
         
  • Introduction to Advanced Robotics Topics
    • Multi-agent systems.
    • Cooperative and swarm robotics.
    • Multi-sensor data fusion.
    • Simulating robots.
       
  • Computer Vision
    • Image capture methods.
    • Real-time image processing.
    • Histogram techniques.
    • Image normalization.
    • Edge detection.
    • Blob tracking.
    • Image Dilation.
    • Target recognition and tracking.
    • Vision based robot control.

Cost:

In order to ensure the best possible venue for students we are providing early registration discounts. Please refer to the table below in order to get pricing details.

Registration Payment Received By
Amount
May 25, 2009
Rs. 8,500
Jun 15, 2009
Rs. 9,500

Group Discount: In case you wish to participate in a group of three or more, you will be provided
with one kit for the entire group with a cost of Rs. 6500 per group member. (Please call for registration instructions)

Course Description

This summer camp course aims to provide them with a sound foundation out of theoretical and practical hands on knowledge and experience in the field of robotics. The course will provide students insight in to intelligent systems, remotely operated and autonomous robots and unmanned systems.

Through the course of this workshop, the student will have an opportunity to work on plentiful hands on projects, thereby enabling them to construct intelligent autonomous robots to perform a variety of tasks. All the modules shown above in the course description and the hands on projects will be covered during the length of this course. The provided kit will enable students to continue their experiments, and take the vast sea of knowledge gained from this course, towards building more complex machines.

Globally, the robotics industry and academic community is working on complex machines that require in-depth knowledge of a variety of fields ranging from computer science and electronics engineering to mechanical engineering and aerospace design. This course will equip students with the basic tenets of all these fields.

The Faculty

The faculty of this course has been educated, and even are from, the USA, Canada, India, Germany, Romania, Hungary and other countries. Having won many international meritorious awards and conducted research in the fields of intelligent systems and robotics, this diverse group of individuals is highly qualified to train students in this field. Moreover, experience in conducting various workshops in USA and India has given the faculty world-class experience in ensuring the highest levels of academic excellence throughout the course. Furthermore, students stand to benefit from this dynamic and highly talented faculty through the active research programs of IURS and their own home institutions, in which they are involved, as well. This faculty has won numerous international awards, published many papers and holds various patents in their relevant fields.

Click here for more information on the faculty.

 


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